THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE   LEVEL   OF   SOCIAL    MOTION 


THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL 
MOTION 


AN   INQUIRY    INTO    THE    FUTURE 
CONDITIONS  OF  HUMAN  SOCIETY 


BY 
MICHAEL   A.    LANE 

AUTHOR    OF    "  GREAT    PHILOSOPHERS 


gotfe 
THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

LONDON  :    MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTD. 
1902 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1902, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped  March,  1902. 


Norteoot  \9ttst 

3.  8.  Cuihing  &  Co.  -  Berwick  tc  Smith 
Norwood  Masi.  U.S.A. 


HM 

I 


JL 


PREFACE 


THE  pages  of  this  book  are  addressed  to  the  man 
and  to  the  woman  of  average  education.  I  have  fol- 
lowed this  plan  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  average 
man  and  woman  of  culture  in  the  present  time  know 
more  about  social  growth,  and  social  life  in  general, 
than  did  the  "  learned  "  philosophers  of  any  other  age 
in  the  history  of  the  human  intellect.  The  time  has 
long  since  passed  when  science  can  belong  to  the  few, 
and  the  sooner  this  fact  becomes  impressed  upon  the 
minds  of  the  men  who  dig  in  the  laboratories  the  bet- 
ter it  will  be  for  the  progress  of  science  at  large. 

By  way  of  preface  I  have  little  to  say  except  to  in- 
dicate the  character  of  the  work  I  have  attempted  to 
do.  This  book  is  the  fruit  of  many  years  of  investi-* 
gation  into  the  phenomena  of  human  society  and  into 
the  causes  of  social  action  in  general.  My  purpose 
has  been  to  discover  a  law  of  social  motion  which 
shall  harmonize  the  bewildering  facts  of  human  his- 
tory ;  account  for  the  apparently  inconceivable  con- 
tradictions between  human  aspirations  and  human 
injustice  ;  and  foreshadow  the  future  of  human  so- 
ciety in  its  moral,  intellectual,  and  economic  forms. 
It  appears  that  I  have  discovered  a  law  of  this  kind, 
and  I  submit  the  result  of  my  labors  to  the  general 
public,  and  at  the  same  time  to  the  scientific  world,  in 

150'0127 


vi  PREFACE 

the  belief  that  my  theory  will  find  capable  critics  on 
either  hand.  The  most  I  can  do  in  this  preface  is  to 
state  in  the  most  general  way  the  main  conclusions 
flowing  from  the  law  of  social  motion  developed  in 
this  book.  These  conclusions  are  as  follow  :  — 

Human  society  is  rapidly  moving  toward  a  state  of 
equality  very  similar  in  all  essentials  to  that  which  is 
advocated  by  socialist  philosophers  as  the  ideal  of  a 
genuinely  Christian  life.  The  forces  drawing  the 
human  race  to  this  remarkable  end  are  the  very 
forces  by  which  human  history  has  been  thus  far 
wrought  out.  They  are  the  same  forces  described  by 
Darwin  in  his  law  of  natural  selection. 

Accompanying  this  drift  to  economic  equality  will 
be  found  several  facts  of  the  highest  importance  in 
the  social  evolution  of  man. 

The  brain  of  civilized  woman  is  increasing  in  weight. 
Her  intellect  is  rapidly  developing  a  new  and  extraor- 
dinary capacity,  and  the  ultimate  end  of  this  progress  in 
woman  will  be  a  social  state  in  which  men  and  women 
will  be  intellectually  equal,  or  nearly  so. 
.  The  human  population  of  the  earth  is  moving  with 
accelerating  force  toward  a  mean,  or  normal  number 
which,  when  once  reached,  can  never  again  be  dis- 
turbed. 

The  social  conditions  upon  which  this  twofold  equi- 
librium will  rest  —  the  equilibrium  of  economic  equal- 
ity and  that  of  a  stable  number  of  population  —  are 
reacting  now,  and  will  react  in  the  future  upon  the 
so-called  inferior  races.  It  would  appear  that  through 
the  force  of  progress  itself  these  races  must  be  totally 
eliminated  from  the  earth.  Their  elimination  will 
not  be  accomplished  by  war  or  by  pestilence ;  but  by 


PREFACE  vii 

the  general  diffusion  of  wealth  and  education  which 
the  march  of  progress  demands.  The  elimination  is 
now  going  on  and  is  rapidly  wiping  out  more  than 
one  race  of  these  inferior  men. 

These  are  the  principal  conclusions  flowing  from 
the  law  I  have  attempted  to  demonstrate  in  this  vol- 
ume. There  are  many  other  conclusions  having  to 
do  with  the  moral,  intellectual,  and  aesthetic  progress 
of  the  human  family,  but  for  light  upon  these  I  must 
refer  the  reader  to  the  book  itself. 

M.  A.  L. 
OCTOBER,  1901. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


CHAPTER 

I.  THE  FLOW  OF  MORAL  ENERGY    .        .        .        .  i 

II.  BASIC  FORCES  AND  FUNCTIONS     ....  33 

III.  ORGANISM  AND  ENVIRONMENT      ....  84 

IV.  ORGANISM  AND  ENVIRONMENT  CONTINUED  .        .124 
V.  THE  INCREMENT  OF  PSYCHIC  CAPACITY       .        .  159 

VI.  THE  INCREMENT  AND  THE  SOCIAL  SCALE  .        .  188 

VII.  SOCIAL  KINETICS 237 

VIII.  SOCIAL  KINETICS  CONTINUED        ....  286 

IX.  THE  LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION      .        .        •        •  331 

X.  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION      .        .        •        •  41? 

XI.  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM 47° 

XII.  MORAL  EQUILIBRIUM  AND  CONCLUSION        .        •  525 


THE   LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL  MOTION 
CHAPTER   I 

THE  FLOW  OF  MORAL  ENERGY 

IT  is  a  wholesome  practice  to  review,  now  and  then, 
the  progress  that  has  been  made  by  the  human  intel- 
lect. The  intelligent  man  of  to-day  smiles  at  the 
beliefs  of  his  forefathers,  while  the  sympathetic  man 
shudders  at  their  cruelties.  In  the  opinions  of  mod- 
ern people  the  ancient  world  was  an  incomprehensible 
compound  of  ignorance,  pain,  and  depravity. 

The  ancients  did  not  understand  their  own  nature 
or  the  nature  of  the  things  around  them.  They  talked 
much  and  did  little.  They  guessed  about  everything, 
and  they  knew  nothing.  The  less  they  were  able  to 
comprehend,  the  more  satisfied  they  seemed  to  be  with 
their  own  notions  about  the  causes  and  the  purpose  of 
the  visible  and  the  invisible  world. 

All  this,  however,  has  been  changed.  The'  char- 
acter of  human  thought  seems  to  have  undergone  a 
right-about  reversal.  The  wise  men  of  the  present 
time  are  those  who  decline  to  venture  a  guess  about 
anything  —  particularly  about  the  cause  of  universal 
existence,  a  subject  upon  which  the  ancients  were 
ever  ready  with  an  opinion  and  a  theory.  It  would 
seem  that,  as  men  grow  wise,  they  grow  cautious  also ; 

B  I 


2  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

that  superior  knowledge  is  accompanied  by  deeper 
humility ;  and  that  the  flame  of  unbounded  faith  has 
been  quenched  by  a  desire  for  rational  demonstration. 

A  comparison  of  ancient  and  modern  thought  will 
show  us  how  thorough  has  been  this  reversal  in  man's 
ways  of  thinking.  All  of  the  earliest  written  records 
of  human  life  disclose  the  human  intellect  attempting 
to  map  out  the  entire  scheme  of  universal  creation. 
Wise  men  seldom  make  similar  efforts  now.  Their 
attention  has  been  turned  from  the  universe,  as  a 
whole,  to  the  nature  of  its  smallest  particular  parts. 
Instead  of  trying  to  explain  how  the  illimitable  total- 
ity of  things  sprang  into  being,  they  are  trying  to 
discover  the  remote  process  of  life  in  the  remote  inte- 
rior of  the  microscopic  cell. 

In  the  development  of  this  inversion  of  intellect 
many  old  beliefs  have  been  annihilated  and  many 
ancient  errors  removed ;  and  chief  among  the  changes 
thus  brought  about  are  those  which  concern  the  his- 
tory of  man  himself  and  of  the  nations  of  which  that 
history  is  the  record. 

Intelligent  and  sympathetic  men  listen  with  delight 
to  the  story  of  the  ages.  They  never  tire  of  hearing 
that  universal  epic  which  has  for  its  episodes  the  rise 
and  fall  of  races,  the  exploits  of  nations,  and  the  suc- 
cessive revolutions  in  the  intellect  of  mankind.  Yet 
he  who  would  account  for  the  facts  of  human  his- 
tory by  rational  methods  must  approach  his  subject 
cautiously,  lest  perchance  a  too  literal  presentation  of 
fact  be  received  with  incredulity,  or  perhaps  resent- 
ment. Repugnance  to  being  told  that  their  intimate 
beliefs  are  false  is  a  common  character  of  men  in  all 
ages  and  in  all  places. 


I  THE   FLOW   OF   MORAL   ENERGY  3 

This  truth  is  perfectly  plain.  But  it  is  not  so  plain 
that  the  intensity  of  such  repugnance  is  measured  by 
the  fallaciousness  of  the  beliefs  themselves.  In  a 
civilized  state  we  may  with  safety  deny  the  exist- 
ence of  witchcraft;  but  to  do  so  in  a  tribe  of  Cen- 
tral African  savages  would  be  hazardous,  if  not  fatal. 
On  the  other  hand,  men  have  suffered  extreme  pen- 
alties in  Europe  for  denying  that  the  earth  is  flat ; 
whereas  to-day  such  denial  would  rouse  the  anger  of 
men  nowhere  in  all  Christendom. 

If,  therefore,  the  philosophic  historian  would  pre- 
sent a  theory  of  human  conduct  conflicting  with  popu- 
lar notions  of  truth,  he  must  be  prepared  for  criticism 
the  reverse  of  kind,  and  for  an  acceptance  which,  if 
it  is  to  be  general,  must  be  slowly  and  painfully 
won. 

But  this  is  not  all ;  he  is  met  with  a  more  discour- 
aging prospect  still.  He  is  by  no  means  assured  of 
a  welcome  reception,  even  at  the  hands  of  the  few 
whose  lives  are  devoted  to  the  discovery  of  new  truths 
and  to  the  incidental  destruction  of  old  errors.  For 
even  these  suffer  from  that  common  human  character 
already  described.  They,  too,  have  beliefs ;  and  if 
not  beliefs,  they  have  theories,  of  which  they  leave 
go  with  reluctance,  even  in  the  face  of  what  seems  to 
be  the  extreme  of  probability. 

It  is  the  purpose  of  the  author  of  this  book  to  lay 
before  the  minds  of  thinking  people  a  new  conception 
of  social  progress  and  a  new  theory  of  human  history. 
He  realizes  the  extraordinary  difficulty  of  the  task, — 
difficulty  not  only  in  the  arrangement  of  the  facts  to 
be  considered,  but  in  the  logical  application  of  his 
theory  to  universal  history.  That  he  is  not  too  pre- 


4  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

sumptuous  he  hopes  will  be  made  clear  in  the  sequel. 
But  the  undertaking,  presumptuous  as  it  may  be, 
will  have  been  more  than  justified  if  his  theory  wins 
a  hearing  in  the  courts  of  scientific  judgment  and 
challenges  attention  in  the  forum  of  public  thought. 

The  vast  and  intricate  structure  of  human  knowl- 
edge we  now  possess  has  arisen  by  slow  and  almost 
imperceptible  growth  from  very  simple  beginnings. 
Every  new  idea,  every  fresh  demonstration  of  ex- 
perience rests  solidly  upon  an  underlying  fact  or 
demonstration,  fixed  in  its  place  by  the  hands  of 
patient  toilers  who  knew  not  that  they  were  merely 
preparing  the  way  for  builders  who  were  to  come 
after  them.  Many  of  the  great  blocks  which  form 
the  body  of  the  structure  were  imperfectly  hewn  and 
unskilfully  placed  at  the  first  attempt,  and  it  has 
been  necessary  often  to  tear  down  and  build  anew. 
But  in  spite  of  these  delays  and  these  corrections,  the 
structure  has  arisen  with  lofty  and  grand,  though 
slowly  wrought,  proportions,  and  from  the  rubble  of 
time  we  have  reared  up  great  walls  and  fair  outlines 
giving  promise  of  future  beauty,  strength,  and  dura- 
bility. 

But  while  this  is  true,  we  may  be  none  the  less 
assured  that  human  knowledge,  when  complete  as 
man  can  make  it,  will  present  a  structure  of  vastly 
different  character  from  that  which  we  now  see.  In 
looking  back  upon  the  past  we  observe  that  science 
has  been  enlarging  its  domains  simultaneously  in  all 
directions.  Human  curiosity,  feeding  itself  upon 
material  within  easy  reach,  has  developed  first  in 
the  direction  of  physical  and  biological  fact.  In  the 
infancy  of  rational  speculation,  general  causes  were 


I  THE   FLOW  OF   MORAL   ENERGY  5 

assigned  to  the  procession  of  phenomena  in  the  out- 
ward world,  and  men  believed  that  the  easiest  solu- 
tions of  natural  mysteries  were  the  true  ones.  With 
the  advance  of  modern  science  and  its  methods  these 
old  beliefs  fell  away,  to  be  replaced  by  demonstrable 
theories  based  upon  the  simple  perceptions  of  com- 
mon experience.  Matter  was  weighed  and  analyzed, 
instruments  were  invented  to  insure  the  accuracy  of 
the  measurements,  and  experiments  were  made  to 
test  the  truth  of  the  observations  taken. 

In  this  way,  the  knowledge  of  nature  we  now 
have  has  been  won  by  the  patient  effort  and  thought 
of  a  few  men  who  have  unselfishly  labored  to  gain 
the  priceless  wealth  of  truth  only  to  divide  it  freely 
among  their  fellows. 

The  method  of  science  is  no  more  or  less  than  the 
application  upon  a  large  scale  of  the  simple  way  of 
procedure  followed  by  a  savage  who  carefully  tracks 
his  game  through  the  tangle  of  a  forest ;  and  the 
motive  which  impels  men  to  the  highest  achieve- 
ments of  scientific  inquiry  is  only  a  refinement  of 
that  simple  curiosity  which  animates  the  same  savage 
to  discover  the  cause  of  a  mysterious  sound,  or  to 
render  to  himself  a  satisfactory  reason  for  the  motion 
of  the  stars,  or  the  movements  of  air  currents. 

There  is  a  noble  as  well  as  a  vulgar  curiosity,  al- 
though the  motive  in  the  two  characters  of  mind  is 
one  and  the  same.  The  astronomer  who  watched  the 
planets  for  thirty  years  to  discover  the  law  of  their 
motion  was  moved  by  impulses  precisely  similar,  in 
their  nature,  to  those  of  a  child  who  pulls  apart  a 
mechanism  devised  with  much  labor  and  ingenuity 
by  his  elders.  The  most  admirable  achievements  of 


6  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

the  scientific  mind  are  those  which  have  been  attained 
without  the  slightest  view  to  utility. 

As  long  ago  as  the  time  of  John  Locke,  and  pos- 
sibly of  Thomas  Hobbes,  the  philosophers  of  Europe 
had  turned  their  attention  from  merely  metaphysical 
subjects  to  an  examination  of  the  human  mind  by  the 
use  of  the  very  methods  which  their  contemporaries 
were  then  applying  to  chemistry,  physics,  and  physi- 
ology. With  the  publication  of  Hobbes's  "  Leviathan  " 
began  the  disintegration  of  the  old  mental  philosophy, 
and  to-day  the  science  of  psychology  is  approaching 
an  exactness  comparable  with  that  of  the  other 
sciences  which  have  an  assured  place  in  the  curricu- 
lum of  the  higher  schools.  With  the  dawn  of  the 
nineteenth  century  came  the  light  of  another  and 
a  new  science  which  has  developed  with  striking 
rapidity  of  growth,  and  which  to-day  forms  the  basis 
of  a  reconstruction  of  the  entire  realm  of  thought  in 
which  human  institutions  and  human  progress  play 
the  most  conspicuous  part. 

We  believe  that  we  are  only  voicing  a  general 
opinion  when  we  say  that  a  rational  conception  of 
human  history  was  impossible  until  the  discovery  of 
the  law  of  natural  selection  by  Charles  Darwin  and 
Alfred  Russell  Wallace.  And  it  is  only  within  com- 
paratively recent  years  that  the  importance  of  Dar- 
win's law  in  all  intelligent  conceptions  of  human 
progress  has  been  appreciated.  The  mystery  of  the 
growth,  decay,  and  death  of  nations  may  happily  be 
likened  to  the  mystery  of  life  in  general,  with  its 
innumerable,  varied  forms  and  its  apparent  lack  of 
order,  design,  or  purpose. 

As  we  glance  backward   through  history  we  are 


I  THE   FLOW   OF   MORAL   ENERGY  7 

confronted  with  a  bewildering  array  of  facts  which 
seem  hopelessly  inscrutable.  We  behold  the  march 
of  the  nations  pressing  forward,  now  swiftly,  now 
slowly,  rushing  on  precipitously  there,  pausing  here 
as  if  stricken  powerless  by  a  force  unseen  and  in- 
conceivable. Here  we  find  a  people  conquering  the 
world,  rising  to  the  supremacy  of  power,  and  rapidly 
collapsing  and  disappearing  in  a  few  years.  There 
we  find  another  people  which  continues  to  live  through 
the  ages  unchanged  and  apparently  unchangeable. 
Now,  it  is  a  race  of  semi-savages  overwhelming  an 
old  and  established  civilization,  and  reducing  its  su- 
perb works  to  a  heap  of  ruins.  Again,  it  is  an  ancient 
civilization  defying  time  and  conquest  as  if  by  sheer 
inertia. 

Religions,  ancient  and  firm-set,  crumble  and  vanish 
forever  from  the  face  of  the  earth ;  while  new  reli- 
gions, beginning  as  a  germ  in  some  obscure  and  re- 
mote soil,  suddenly  acquire  tremendous  vitality,  and 
oversweep  the  world  with  irresistible  power.  The 
tide  of  civilization  pours  its  volume  to  the  west  in 
one  age.  In  another  it  returns  from  the  west  to  the 
east,  threatening  the  life  of  the  people  from  which  it 
first  arose.  Ancient  forms  of  government  give  way 
to  new.  Republics  arise,  to  fall,  in  time,  before 
monarchies.  Monarchs  and  monarchies  are  brushed 
away  by  democracies.  In  some  nations  an  age  of 
supine  credulity  and  faith  makes  way  soon  for  an 
age  of  scepticism  and  doubt.  Again,  we  see  an  age 
of  indifference  give  place  to  universal  fanaticism. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  observe  similar  fluxions  in 
the  history  of  intellect.  Following  fast  upon  an 
age  of  extreme  enlightenment,  we  behold  a  people 


8  THE   LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

sink  to  the  level  of  barbarous  ignorance.  The  de- 
scendants of  a  race  which  reared  marvellously  beauti- 
ful temples,  and  lived  in  the  refinement  of  physical 
luxury,  we  behold  camped  in  hovels  built  on  the 
ruins  of  the  palaces  of  their  ancestors.  The  beggar 
sits  on  the  empty  tomb  of  the  king  who  ruled  his 
forefathers. 

Under  and  behind  this  flow  and  ebb  of  human 
affairs  is  a  force  which  is  not  understood  without 
some  close  reflection.  The  conviction  comes  home 
to  us  that  man  is  not  the  arbiter  of  his  destiny.  In- 
stitutions change,  religions  die,  races  disappear,  polit- 
ical faiths  weaken  and  pass  away,  nations  are  blotted 
out,  and  the  great  dead  appear  in  the  eyes  of  the 
living  as  the  things  and  the  actors  in  a  rapidly  vanish- 
ing dream.  Human  history  is  at  best  an  uncertain 
record,  coming  to  us,  as  it  does,  surcharged  with  the 
ignorant  beliefs  and  personal  prejudices  of  its  authors. 
The  facts,  difficult  as  they  would  be  to  understand  if 
they  were  presented  to  our  inspection  as  they  really 
took  place,  are  so  altered  by  accident  or  by  intent, 
that  they  seem  to  be  wholly  inscrutable.  Living 
witnesses  there  are  none ;  and  of  inanimate  witnesses 
there  are  so  few  as  to  be  next  to  unavailing.  Such 
seems  to  be  the  material  with  which  the  philosophic 
historian  has  to  deal. 

But  much  of  the  distress  which  had  accompanied 
the  study  of  history  was  relieved  by  the  luminous 
discovery  of  Charles  Darwin,  and  it  is  with  this  dis- 
covery in  mind  that  we  approach  the  subject  described 
in  the  title  lines  of  our  work.  Our  purpose  here  will 
not  be  to  discuss  those  events  which  usually  attract 
the  minds  of  men  who  read  and  write  history.  Fas- 


I  THE  FLOW  OF  MORAL  ENERGY  9 

dilating  as  these  events  may  be,  they  are  not  all-im- 
portant in  the  study  of  social  forces  and  of  social 
progress.  The  personality  of  a  king  may  be  a 
curiously  interesting  subject.  The  battles  won  by  a 
great  general  are  stirring  objects  for  the  contempla- 
tion of  him  who  loves  to  excite  the  imagination  with 
romantic  narratives.  The  crimes  of  a  Nero  or  the 
follies  of  a  Domitianus  or  an  Elagabalus,  the  cam- 
paigns of  an  Alexander  or  of  a  Napoleon,  the  pitiable 
life  and  doom  of  a  Robespierre,  are  themes  which 
serve  to  illustrate  the  causes  of  human  history,  but 
which  are  in  themselves  of  no  general  importance. 
One  battle  is  very  like  another.  One  great  soldier 
differs  from  another  only  in  the  kind  of  implements 
of  war  he  uses  or  in  the  general  composition  of  his 
campaigns.  But  all  have  a  generic  cause  and  kin- 
ship. Caligula  and  Henry  VIII.,  separated  as  they 
were  in  time,  are  much  the  same  in  character.  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  and  Oliver  Cromwell,  differing  as  they 
do  in  personal  attributes,  both  represent  the  same 
underlying  principles  of  human  liberty.  Much  of 
the  ecclesiastical  and  political  history  of  Europe  is  a 
chronique  scandaleuse,  which,  interesting  as  it  is  by  way 
of  diversion,  helps  us  but  little  to  a  clear  understand- 
ing of  that  general  procession  of  human  affairs,  the 
order  and  the  cause  of  which  it  is  our  purpose  here  to 
master  and  to  comprehend.  To  discover  the  most 
available  material  for  our  investigation,  let  us  turn 
then,  not  to  ancient  times  or  to  the  beginnings  of 
human  history,  as  they  are  found  in  the  savage  races 
occupying  the  earth  before  the  invention  of  letters, 
but  to  facts  to  be  observed  in  the  present  day  and  in 
the  life  of  our  own  civilization. 


10  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

Within  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  there  has 
sprung  up  in  letters  a  distinct  movement,  which,  for 
want  of  a  more  precise  term,  has  been  designated 
"  social  philosophy  "  by  those  who  participate  in  the 
discussion  as  well  as  by  those  who  constitute  them- 
selves its  critics.  This  movement,  however,  is  inade- 
quately described  by  the  adjective  "  philosophical." 
It  is  more  than  philosophical.  Its  roots  are  set  in  a 
soil  richer  and  deeper  than  that  of  mere  knowledge. 
Its  circle  is  by  no  means  conterminous  with  a  limited 
coterie  of  minds.  Its  influence  is  felt  and  understood 
by  men  and  women  who,  by  no  extreme  of  intellectual 
courtesy,  can  be  called  philosophers.  Its  purpose  is 
far  other  than  that  of  bringing  together  loose  ends  of 
thought  upon  subjects  concerned  with  human  society; 
and  indeed  many  of  those  who  are  foremost  in  the 
movement  would  be  the  first  to  repudiate  the  charge 
that  they  are  concerned  with  anything  even  remotely 
bearing  upon  intellectual  speculation  of  any  kind. 

There  is  yet  another  name  for  this  new  and  extraor- 
dinary movement  —  a  name  which  is  even  more  in- 
adequate than  that  of  "social  philosophy"  because,  if 
anything,  it  is  more  misleading.  This  other  name  is 
"sociology."  The  word  was  first  used  definitively 
by  the  French  philosopher,  Auguste  Comte,  who  pur- 
posed to  create  a  science  having  for  its  material  the 
facts  observed  in  the  field  of  human  society  —  a 
science  which  would  treat  of  human  affairs  as  the 
physical  and  biological  sciences  treat  of  the  facts  of 
nature  at  large. 

Following  upon  Comte,  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer 
sought  to  develop  the  subject  in  one  of  the  depart- 
ments of  his  vast  scheme  of  thought  which  he  has 


I  THE   FLOW   OF   MORAL   ENERGY  II 

called  "The  Synthetic  Philosophy."  The  germ  of 
his  system,  as  he  himself  informs  us,  is  to  be  found 
in  his  earliest  work  of  importance,  "Social  Statics." 
But  Mr.  Spencer's  scheme  in  general  is  now  so  well 
known  that  there  is  no  need  here  to  dwell  upon  it. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that  in  all  respects  he  has  endeavored 
faithfully  to  adhere  to  the  plans  he  outlined  for  him- 
self at  the  beginning  of  that  remarkable  task  which 
he  has  so  recently  finished  and  given  to  the  world  in 
its  completed  form. 

Two  other  names  should  be  mentioned  as  pioneers 
in  this  field.  The  first  of  these  is  Adam  Ferguson,  a 
Scotch  philosopher,  who,  toward  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  in  his  celebrated  "  Essay,"  at- 
tempted to  lay  out  a  method  of  treating  human  his- 
tory which  departed  from  the  old  method  in  that  it 
minimized  the  importance  of  those  events  which  had, 
up  to  that  time,  been  pressed  to  the  front  to  the 
neglect  of  the  larger  and  more  profound  movements 
in  the  background.  Ferguson  dimly  saw  that  the 
real  history  of  the  human  race  did  not  consist  in 
pedigrees  of  princes,  the  dynasties  of  great  nations, 
the  battles  of  victorious  generals,  or  the  intrigues  of 
courts  and  kings.  This  rare  old  Celt  was  the  Bacon 
of  social  science,  and  the  time  is  not  far  distant  when 
his  claims  to  originality  and  to  genuinely  profound 
perception  will  be  freely  acknowledged  by  all  those 
who  desire  to  see  that  credit  is  placed  where  it 
properly  belongs. 

The  other  man  who  should  not  be  forgotten  in  a 
review  of  this  kind  is  the  unfortunate  Henry  Thomas 
Buckle,  who  died  before  he  could  complete  the  heroic 
work  he  had  set  himself  to  do.  The  right  spirit  per- 


12  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

vades  every  line  of  that  really  meritorious  and  stimu- 
lating book,  "  The  History  of  Civilization  "  ;  and  it  is 
strange  that  so  clear  a  brain  as  that  possessed  by 
Buckle  should  have  failed  to  perceive  the  force  of 
Comte's  brilliant  suggestion,  and  to  have  fallen  again 
and  again  into  the  very  method  he  had  sought  so  con- 
scientiously to  avoid. 

But  let  us  return  to  the  word  "  sociology  "  and  its 
history  since  Comte  made  it  common  in  France,  and 
Mr.  Spencer  enlarged  upon  it  in  England.  The  liter- 
ature which  has  been  written  under  the  title  of  soci- 
ology is  almost  without  an  end.  If  the  word  means 
anything  it  should  signify  the  "  science  of  society." 
But  even  those  who  call  themselves  sociologists,  and 
who  permit  others  so  to  designate  them,  would  be 
more  properly  described  by  the  term  "  socionomists," 
i.e.  men  who  arrange  the  materials  with  whkfh  true 
sociology  must  deal.  If,  however,  we  take  the  view 
suggested  above,  we  can  clearly  understand  the  wide- 
spread misuse  of  the  word  and  the  meaning  which  is 
sought  to  be  conveyed  by  that  very  misuse.  That 
literary  movement  called  social  philosophy  by  some, 
and  sociology  by  others,  is  really  an  index  to  the 
very  great  changes  going  on  in  popular  thought  — 
changes  to  be  regarded  only  as  living  proof  of  one 
important  and  significant  fact  —  the  fact  that  hitman 
society  is  rapidly  becoming  conscious  of  its  own 
existence. 

Let  us  pause  a  moment  and  consider  this  matter  as 
one  who  seeks  the  cause  of  a  seemingly  obscure  phe- 
nomenon. In  the  widespread  discussions  which  may 
or  may  not  find  their  way  into  print,  but  all  of  which 
deal  directly  with  what  are  called  "social  questions," 


i  THE   FLOW  OF   MORAL   ENERGY  13 

we  find  two  kinds  of  thought,  and  two  kinds  of 
thinkers.  First,  there  are  men  whose  sole  labor  con- 
sists in  an  effort  to  work  some  change  in  the  morals 
and  institutions  of  civilized  humanity.  Secondly, 
there  are  men  whose  efforts  are  directed  toward 
understanding  the  meaning  of  that  vast  and  compli- 
cated pageant  called  social  progress.  We  need  not 
go  far  to  find  a  name  for  those  of  the  first  kind  de- 
scribed. They  have  been  most  felicitously  called 
reformers.  They  are  everywhere  in  evidence.  They 
meet  us  at  every  turn.  They  are  heard  and  seen  in 
every  quarter,  public  and  private.  They  pass  in  one 
long  procession  from  the  throne  to  the  workshop. 
They  are  found  in  the  bottom  of  the  mine,  in  the 
pulpit,  in  the  professor's  chair,  in  the  seat  of  the 
legislator  and  of  the  judge,  at  the  helm  of  the  jour- 
nal, in  the  open  streets,  and  at  the  handle  of  the 
plough.  But,  wherever  found,  these  individuals  all 
partake  of  one  character.  They  are  all  advocates. 
They  all  demand  that  some  reform  shall  be  made  in 
human  affairs,  whereby  there  shall  be  a  more  even 
division  of  the  good  things  created  by  human  labor  ; 
whereby  justice  will  be  more  efficiently  served,  and 
the  weak  shall  be  protected  from  the  strong.  Most 
of  them  have  their  own  programmes  whereby  these 
things  are  to  be  brought  about.  Some  of  them  are 
leaders  of  great  "  schools  "  of  reformers  with  specific 
plans  and  elaborate  systems  of  procedure.  Others 
advance  some  one  principle  as  the  supreme  recipe 
for  human  happiness.  Others,  again,  have  no  for- 
mula for  the  cure  of  the  ills  of  the  body  social,  but 
insist  that  something  must  be  done  if  society  is  not 
to  return  to  worse  than  the  savage  state.  And  a  few 


14  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

minds  —  great  and  imperial  minds,  too  —  are  satisfied 
that  there  is  no  hope  at  all  for  that  modern  Sisyphus 
we  call  Society,  whose  best  efforts  can  only  be  re- 
warded by  having  the  stone  of  progress  roll  back 
upon  it,  threatening  danger  and  disaster. 

This  is  the  picture  presented  to  the  eyes  of  the 
second  kind  of  men  we  have  described,  and  these  are 
comparatively  few ;  so  few,  in  fact,  as  to  be  almost 
unknown  to  the  great  world  in  which  the  debate  of 
reform  waxes  louder  day  by  day ;  in  which  men 
sweat  and  toil,  and  sorrows  seem  to  multiply  and 
pain  increase.  Distinct  is  the  picture  to  these  observ- 
ing eyes.  They  see  the  struggle,  and  they  hear  the 
noise  of  the  battle  and  of  the  debate.  Yet  it  is  not 
in  their  minds  to  have  sympathy  with  the  toilers  or 
with  their  friends,  the  reformers.  They  do  not  advo- 
cate any  plan  of  relief.  They  neither  hope  nor  de- 
spair. Their  only  purpose  is  to  understand.  They 
desire  to  know  why  the  great  Sisyphus  rolls  the 
mighty  stone  up  the  hill,  and  why  the  stony  mass 
falls  back  upon  him,  if  fall  indeed  it  does.  These 
latter  men,  in  so  far  as  their  work  in  the  world  is 
concerned,  have  no  religion,  or  morals,  or  politics,  or 
affections.  Let  them  once  know  the  causes  under- 
lying all  the  complex  motions  of  society ;  let  them 
master  the  law  which  moves  the  mass  forward  in 
spite  of  itself  ;  let  them  formulate  for  themselves  the 
necessary  action  of  the  forces  they  see  about  them, 
and  they  will  be  content. 

This  attitude  toward  society  is  precisely  the  atti- 
tude taken  in  other  departments  of  science  by  those 
whose  labor  is  generally  summed  up  under  the  head 
of  "scientific  knowledge."  The  man  of  science  has 


I  THE   FLOW   OF   MORAL   ENERGY  15 

ever  before  him  but  one  purpose,  and  that  is  the  dis- 
covery of  truth.  Sympathy,  affection,  belief,  moral- 
ity, custom,  privilege,  happiness,  none  of  these  things 
weigh  with  that  man  who  would  know  the  facts  of 
nature  and  the  sequence  of  their  occurrence.  The 
true  end  of  pure  science  is  pure  knowledge,  quite 
apart  from  utility  or  belief  of  any  kind. 

This  is  the  position  taken  by  the  true  sociologists 
of  the  present  day,  but  their  part  in  the  literary  move- 
ment we  have  mentioned  should  be  called  the  litera- 
ture of  socionomy  to  distinguish  it  from  that  of  those 
persons  commonly  called  sociologists,  but  who  bear 
the  same  relation  to  true  social  science  that  astrolo- 
gers bear  to  astronomy.  Setting  aside,  for  the  pres- 
ent, the  question  whether  this  attitude  of  sociology  be 
a  desirable  one  or  not,  let  us  place  ourselves  in  a 
position  to  view  the  march  of  human  events  with  the 
critical  eye  of  an  observer  and  to  trace  back,  if  pos- 
sible, the  big  results  of  progress  to  their  roots  in  the 
substrata  of  human  impulse  and  motive. 

It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  the  principal  phenome- 
non of  the  social  life  of  to-day  is  that  peculiar  state 
of  mind  ordinarily  designated  by  the  term  "  moral 
sense."  In  other  words,  the  chief  question  in  all 
discussions  of  social  relations  is  a  "  moral  question." 
It  is  a  question  of  right  and  wrong.  A  reform  is 
urged  because,  in  the  opinion  of  its  advocates,  the 
proposed  change  is  right,  and  the  existing  condition 
is  wrong.  This  fact,  indeed,  is  the  motive  of  all 
changes  in  the  order  of  human  society.  The  patriot 
who  leads  his  countrymen  in  battle  against  an 
oppressor  encourages  his  army  with  the  stirring 
shibboleth, 


1 6  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

"...  The  Right  is  with  us, 
God  is  with  the  Right,  and  Victory  is  with  God." 

The  labor  leader  appeals  to  his  fellow-workers  by 
rousing  them  to  a  sense  of  the  wrong  under  which 
they  live.  The  clergyman  strives  to  impress  upon 
his  hearers  a  sense  of  their  own  wrong-doing.  Devo- 
tion to  duty  —  entirely  apart  from  mere  considerations 
of  selfish  interest  —  is  rewarded  with  the  highest 
praise  in  the  power  of  society  to  bestow.  The  politi- 
cal candidate  who  asks  the  people  for  their  suffrage 
urges  his  claim  for  that  suffrage  on  a  purely  moral 
basis.  The  party  in  power  has  been  corrupt ;  it  has 
been  false  to  its  trusts ;  it  has  plunged  the  country 
into  poverty  or  panic.  In  short,  it  has  not  done 
right.  The  educator  insists  that  only  by  a  spread 
of  learning  can  the  masses  be  made  secure  in  that 
happiness  which  flows  from  the  administration  of  an 
enlightened  justice.  The  economic  reformer  desires 
to  replace  the  present  unjust  system  of  production 
and  distribution  with  one  which,  in  his  opinion,  shall 
restrain  the  few  from  robbing  the  many  of  the  fruits 
of  their  toil.  Why?  For  no  other  reason,  he  will 
tell  you,  than  that  robbery  is  wrong.  In  whatever 
guise  it  appears  the  active  reform  of  the  present  day 
has  no  raison  d'etre  save  alone  a  moral  one. 

And  surely  he  would  be  a  bold  man  who  would 
underestimate  the  importance  of  moral  force  in  social 
development.  There  is  yet  to  be  found  a  human 
group  which  is  not  altogether  swayed  by  this  power- 
ful implement  of  progress.  The  savage  who  cannot 
count  above  five  is  yet  not  without  some  crude  con- 
ception of  justice,  and  in  some  races  of  uncivilized 


I  THE   FLOW   OF   MORAL   ENERGY  I/ 

men  there  is  observed  a  perception  of  right  and 
wrong  so  delicate  as  to  be  compared  with  richer  and 
stronger  communities  in  a  way  distinctly  unfavorable 
to  the  latter.  In  our  own  civilization  we  find  now 
and  then  individuals  in  whom  there  seems  to  be 
totally  lacking  this  characteristically  human  trait; 
yet  it  is  to  be  doubted,  if  investigation  be  pushed 
sufficiently  far,  that  there  will  be  found  any  sane 
man  who  is  quite  without  sympathy,  or  in  whom  what 
is  called  the  moral  sense  is  wholly  dead. 

We  desire  at  the  beginning  of  our  discussion  to 
emphasize  this  all-important  fact :  that  the  most  con- 
spicuous relation  observable  in  the  drift  of  modern 
social  reform  is  inextricably  combined  with  that 
sense  of  right  and  wrong  found  to  be  universal  with 
mankind.  Let  it  be  remembered,  too,  that  notions 
of  justice  become  more  complex  as  we  ascend  in  the 
scale  of  civilization.  The  citizen  of  an  enlightened 
community  will  condemn  with  extreme  detestation 
conduct  which,  in  less  advanced  societies,  is  regarded 
with  equanimity,  if  not  with  approval.  Moreover, 
in  any  one  civilized  society,  opinions  of  individuals 
present  numerous  varieties  which  are  lacking  in 
backward  groups.  Thus  we  find  in  America  and  in 
England  that  men  will  dispute  as  to  the  morality  of 
conduct  about  which  common  opinion  in  Russia  or 
in  Turkey  seems  to  be  fixed  and  determined. 

One  important  and  fundamental  fact,  however, 
should  be  pointed  out.  If  mankind  is  universally 
possessed  of  a  moral  sense,  it  is  none  the  less  true 
that  conceptions  of  moral  value  are  subject  to  change 
both  as  to  time  and  to  place.  That  is  to  say,  men's 
opinions  of  what  is  right  and  wrong  are  subject  to 


1 8  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

change  in  common  with  all  the  other  phenomena  of 
life  and  of  the  world  at  large.  This  fluent  character 
of  moral  opinion  lies,  we  are  convinced,  at  the  bottom 
of  all  the  evolution  through  which  human  society 
has  passed  in  historic  time  and  even  before  it.  It  is 
the  pivot  upon  which  swing  those  powerful  forces 
which  mould  the  destinies  of  nations.  It  is  the 
starting-point  of  those  revolutions,  whether  they  be 
rapid  or  slow,  peaceful  or  violent,  which  have  changed 
the  face  of  society,  and  which  are  changing  it  to-day. 
It  is  moral  energy  which  determines  the  direction  in 
which  social  life  expands,  and  it  is  this  energy,  flow- 
ing on  through  time,  which  creates  all  those  reforma- 
tions with  which  history  has  to  do,  and  which  take 
the  form,  here,  of  long  and  bloody  wars,  and  there, 
of  silent  and  slow  growth  that  gives  to  a  people  a 
moral  and  political  character  which  varies  from  age 
to  age. 

We  have  therefore  entitled  this  chapter  "  The  Flow 
of  Moral  Energy,"  and  by  these  terms  we  mean  no 
more  than  they  themselves  imply. 

Moral  opinions  change.  What  was  right  yester- 
day may  be  wrong  to-day.  That  which  was  good  in 
one  century  may  be  evil  in  the  next.  The  reformer 
who  is  despised  now  will  be  deified  hereafter.  The 
regicide  who  is  execrated  by  the  people  and  put  to 
death  by  the  law,  is  the  hero  and  the  martyr  of  the 
men  and  the  women  of  the  future.  The  wretch  who 
dies  at  the  stake  for  asserting  that  popular  belief  is 
false  is  the  popular  liberator  in  the  mind  of  the  age 
which  follows  his  own. 

The  stream  of  moral  energy  flows  down  through 
the  centuries,  broadening,  deepening,  and  gathering 


I  THE  FLOW  OF  MORAL  ENERGY  19 

force  as  it  approaches  the  time  in  which  we  live. 
The  masses  of  the  people,  once  serfs  and  slaves,  are 
now  the  sovereign  power.  The  sceptre  lies  unclasped 
upon  an  empty  throne.  The  slave  is  dead,  and  his 
son  is  made  ruler  over  the  king.  Upon  the  very 
head  of  Heresy  itself  is  set  the  sovereignty  of  the 
right  of  individual  judgment. 

One  by  one  the  wrongs  of  man  have  been  righted. 
Moral  forces,  growing  with  time,  have  burst  through 
the  mighty  dams  of  oppression  which  men  erected 
with  their  own  hands.  The  liberties  of  one  age  are 
the  fruits  of  the  moral  growth  of  the  ages  before  it. 
Small  sparks  of  moral  feeling  have  expanded  into 
vast  conflagrations  which  have  swept  away  the  insti- 
tutions raised  by  the  dull  sympathies  of  the  past. 
During  century  upon  century  life  and  liberty  have 
trodden  down  the  barriers  that  contained  them. 
Mankind  has  awakened,  age  after  age,  to  the  con- 
sciousness of  new  and  strange  suffering.  The  joy  of 
the  past  is  the  sorrow  of  the  present.  Onward 
sweeps  the  flow.  Where  will  it  end  ? 

The  civilized  man  of  the  present  day  looks  back 
upon  the  old  kingdoms  of  the  earth  and  wonders 
how  such  an  incredible  transformation  can  have 
taken  place.  It  is  a  common  and  erroneous  belief 
that  "  human  nature "  can  never  change.  If  this 
were  the  truth,  it  would  be  impossible  to  conceive  of 
human  progress.  In  the  short  span  of  five  centuries 
Europeans  have  changed  in  every  way  save  in  the 
general  anatomy  of  their  bodies,  and  it  is  entirely 
probable  that,  in  detail,  that  anatomy  has  changed 
too.  The  modern  notion  —  undefined  or  vague  as  it 
may  be  —  that  all  men  are  created  equal,  would  have 


2O  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

seemed  a  monstrous  absurdity  to  Plato  or  to  Marcus 
Aurelius.  Eight  centuries  ago  the  political  doctrine 
of  free  thought  and  liberty  of  religious  worship  would 
have  been  a  criminal  blasphemy  to  Europe.  To-day 
it  is  an  organic  principle  of  every  enlightened  state 
in  the  world.  One  hundred  years  ago  the  doctrine 
that  woman  should  be  made  the  political  equal  of 
man  was  unwritten  and  unheard  of.  To-day  it  is  a 
growing  fact  of  political  life  in  the  richest  and  most 
powerful  nation  in  human  history.  Two  thousand 
years  ago  a  state  without  slavery  was  a  necessary 
contradiction,  an  impossibility  of  thought.  From  the 
ideal  state  which  men  of  to-day  create  for  the  future, 
social  inequality  of  every  kind  and  degree  is  ban- 
ished. In  the  Mosaic  code  and  even  in  Christian 
ethics,  as  we  find  it  in  the  New  Testament,  cruelty  to 
dumb  animals  is  undreamed  of.  To-day  it  is  regarded 
as  an  evidence  of  murderous  and  criminal  predisposi- 
tion. 

Are  not  these  things  proofs  that  "  human  nature  " 
is  not  only  changeable,  but  that  it  has  been  changed 
in  fact  ? 

The  shifting  current  of  moral  ideas  is  evident  in 
every  detail  of  the  life  of  civilized  nations.  In  no 
department  of  our  national  economy  is  this  fact  more 
obtrusive  than  in  the  ethics  preached  from  a  thousand 
religious  pulpits.  Clergymen  have  abandoned  the 
old  appeal  to  the  brutal  and  selfish  interest  of  the 
individual.  The  way  to  peace  lies  no  longer  through 
fear  of  hideous  torture  in  an  eternal  prison,  but  along 
the  pathway  of  tenderness,  charity,  and  good  will  to 
men.  Religious  belief  is  now  justified  by  love  of 
fellow-man  rather  than  by  fear  of  an  inconceivable 


I  THE   FLOW  OF   MORAL   ENERGY  21 

fire.  The  very  moral  attributes  with  which  men  have 
clothed  the  deity  have  changed  with  the  flowing 
opinions  of  civilization.  The  mediaeval  Infinite  Ty- 
rant, who  frightened  the  heart  of  boor  and  slave,  has 
been  replaced  with  a  conception  of  Infinite  Good  and 
unthinkable  Love.  The  God  of  the  serf  was  a  master 
implacable.  The  God  of  the  freeman  is  a  father, 
radiant  with  ineffable  affection  and  exquisite  grace. 
"The  fear  of  God"  has  been  transformed  into  "the 
love  of  man."  The  doctrine  of  total  depravity  has 
made  way  for  the  more  exalted  belief  that  man,  in  a 
healthy  environment,  is  inherently  good. 

If  we  do  not  account  for  this  remarkable  evolution 
upon  the  grounds  we  have  here  advanced,  to  what 
are  we  to  attribute  it  ?  We  do  not  conceive  that  any 
sane  and  cultured  man  will  deny  that  moral  values 
are  subject  to  the  law  of  transformation  which  rules 
the  bodies  and  the  minds  of  human  beings  in  all 
things  else.  We  must  be  allowed  to  assume  that  the 
truth  is  as  we  have  stated.  We  cannot  but  reject,  as 
self-evidently  absurd,  the  bizarre  idea  that  men's  con- 
ceptions of  right  and  wrong  are  immutable ;  that 
moral  ideas  alone  are  fixed  and  rigid,  while  all  other 
ideas,  such  as  those  of  art  and  intellect,  are  plastic 
and  subject  to  the  law  of  growth.  We  do  not  believe 
that  this  doctrine  is  held  by  anybody  who  would  gain 
a  hearing  in  the  debate  of  the  world.  But  if  the 
truth  be  as  we  have  stated  it,  somewhat  important 
conclusions  must  follow.  In  those  conclusions  it  will 
appear  that  the  causes  of  social  progress  lie  remote 
from  the  surface  of  things.  It  will  appear,  too,  that 
the  method  which  has  thus  far  been  adopted  in 
treating  human  history  is  not  a  safe  method.  And, 


22  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

moreover,  we  are  convinced  that  these  conclusions 
will  more  than  probably  demonstrate  that  current 
ideas  concerning  the  organic  life  of  nations  are  based 
upon  false  premises ;  that  political  science  and  eco- 
nomics, in  their  present  form,  are  inadequate  to  ex- 
plain the  broad  facts  of  social  progress ;  and  that 
ethics,  the  nascent  science  which  is  now  drawing  to 
itself  the  careful  scrutiny  of  scholars,  has  before  it  a 
distinctly  open  path.  Lastly,  we  are  convinced  that 
in  the  conclusions  we  hope  rationally  to  draw  from 
our  premises,  it  shall  appear  that  we  have  discovered 
a  law  of  social  growth  which  shall  unify  the  two  con- 
flicting schools  of  thought  upon  social  evolution. 

Before  taking  up  our  inquiry  in  detail  let  us  here 
sketch  for  the  benefit  of  the  general  reader  the  twin 
theories  which  are  now  dominant  in  the  world  of 
social  philosophy. 

Admitted  that  human  society  (to  use  the  favorite 
axiom  of  Herbert  Spencer)  is  "  a  growth  and  not  a 
manufacture,"  the  problem  to  be  solved  involves  the 
question  whether  that  growth  is  determined  by  the 
interests  of  the  individual  or  those  of  society.  That 
is  to  say,  How  far  shall  the  individual  serve  the  pur- 
pose of  society,  and  how  far  shall  society  leave  free 
the  conduct  of  the  individual  ? 

The  principles  implied  in  these  questions  have  re- 
solved themselves  into  two  schools  of  thought  —  the 
one  which  is  called  individualistic,  the  other  social- 
istic, the  respective  cults  of  which  pass  current  under 
the  names  Individualism,  or  Anarchy ;  and  Socialism, 
or  Collectivism.  Under  one  or  the  other  of  these  two 
schools  may  be  classified  every  opinion  concerning 
the  ethics  of  social  life. 


I  THE   FLOW   OF   MORAL   ENERGY  23 

It  is  needful  here  to  call  attention  to  an  important 
distinction.  We  must  not  confuse  the  pure  theory  of 
individualism  or  of  socialism  with  the  contentions 
of  individualists  and  socialists  for  the  general  adoption 
of  their  plans  for  the  public  welfare.  The  individual- 
ist accounts  for  social  phenomena  by  holding  that 
they  have  been  produced  by  what  he  calls  the  process 
of  mdividuation,  or  of  the  unfolding  of  social  growth 
by  and  through  the  growth  of  the  individual.  The 
socialist  accounts  for  them  by  holding  that  they  have 
been  caused  by  the  process  of  socialisation,  or  of  the 
unfolding  of  individual  growth  by  and  through  the 
growth  of  society. 

Holding  these  views,  individualist  and  socialist  go 
farther  and  contend  that  men  should  act  so  as  not  to 
interfere  with  these  natural  processes.  If  society  is 
furthered  by  means  of  individual  growth,  say  the 
adherents  of  that  theory,  society  should  leave  that 
growth  alone.  Any  interference  with  it,  they  urge,  is 
an  interference  with  the  welfare  of  the  body  social. 
The  adherents  of  the  opposite  school  take  the  con- 
trary position.  It  is  the  growth  of  society,  they 
claim,  that  accounts  for  the  enlarging  of  the  life  of 
the  individual.  The  latter,  they  urge,  should  not  be 
allowed  to  interfere  with  the  process  which,  to  their 
view,  is  the  natural  one.  These  are  the  twin  theories 
of  human  society,  together  with  their  active  propa- 
ganda for  a  method  of  life  which  shall  most  safely 
conserve  the  good  of  all. 

Of  the  individualists,  or  anarchists,  we  must  give 
the  foremost  place  to  Herbert  Spencer.  Mr.  Spencer, 
in  point  of  priority  in  time,  and  in  the  vast  wisdom 
and  convincing  logic  he  has  brought  to  bear  on  the 


24  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

subject,  is  by  far  the  most  profound  and  capable 
leader  of  his  school  —  a  school  of  which  he  may  be 
said  to  be  the  virtual  founder.  Of  the  socialists,  we 
are  in  doubt  as  to  which  one  of  the  brilliant  philoso- 
phers who  have  expounded  it  best  deserves  the  first 
place.  The  literature  of  socialism  is  voluminous,  but 
probably  the  one  work  which  leads  all  others  as  a  tem- 
perate and  scientific  effort  to  prove  the  socialist  posi- 
tion is  that  of  Karl  Marx,  called  in  the  title  "  Capital." 

Both  schools  of  thought  are  rich  in  logic  and  nota- 
ble for  the  keenness  with  which  they  have  argued 
their  positions.  It  is  our  own  conviction  that  both 
are  equally  strong  and  equally  weak.  The  one  weak- 
ness common  to  both  lies  in  the  fact  that  neither 
seems  to  have  been  able  to  formulate  a  law  of  social 
motion  which  shall  be  found  to  operate  everywhere, 
quite  apart  from  the  voluntary  efforts  of  man  to 
control  the  forces  impelling  society  forward.  The 
literature  of  socialism  is  scarcely  more  than  an  advo- 
cacy of  collective,  or  state,  administration  and  owner- 
ship of  capital.  And  as  we  shall  not  again  have  need 
to  consider  socialism,  as  such,  in  this  work,  we  shall 
dispose  of  it  here  by  stating  that  we  regard  the  move- 
ment only  as  an  indication  of  that  moral  flux  which 
has  been  the  subject  of  this  first  chapter. 

How  far  Mr.  Spencer  has  been  able  to  dissociate 
from  his  theory  the  notion  that  men  can,  through 
their  governments,  control  natural  laws,  we  need  but 
refer  to  the  last  chapter  but  one  of  the  third  volume 
of  his  "  Principles  of  Sociology."  In  that  chapter 
Mr.  Spencer  adopts  an  attitude  toward  socialism 
which  is  anything  but  philosophical.  He  criticises 
the  movement  in  a  distinctly  hostile  manner,  not  as 


I  THE   FLOW  OF   MORAL   ENERGY  25 

one  who  is  seeking  to  account  for  its  existence,  but 
rather  as  one  who  is  finding  fault  with  it  because  it  is 
in  direct  contradiction  with  his  theory.  He  writes  as 
one  who  should  say :  "  I  have  told  you  how  society  is 
growing.  You  now  come  upon  the  scene  with  your 
socialism  to  prove  that  society  is  growing  in  another 
and  an  opposite  direction.  But  have  a  care !  If  you 
do  not  act  as  I  have  indicated  a  naturally  developing 
society  should  act,  you  will  lapse  into  a  state  which 
will  be  worse  for  you  than  that  from  which  you  are 
trying  to  escape." 

And  as  Mr.  Spencer  opposes  everything  that 
savors  of  state  interference  —  even,  in  a  way,  the 
police  functions  of  government  —  we  can  well  imag- 
ine his  disgust  at  what  he  calls  a  "riot  of  state 
ownership." 

But  if,  as  it  would  appear,  the  drift  of  society  is 
really  toward  the  socialist  state,  is  not  this  fact  an 
evidence  that  natural  evolution  may  have  something 
to  do  with  the  process  ?  If  the  progressive  tendency 
of  government  lies  clearly  in  the  direction  of  enlarged 
government  function,  and  increasing  government  in- 
terference with  industry,  is  not  this  of  itself  sufficient 
to  induce  us  to  inquire  into  its  causes  rather  than  lose 
our  tempers  over  the  existence  of  the  fact  itself  ? 
The  truth  is,  that  since  Mr.  Spencer  first  outlined  his 
superb  argument  for  anarchy  in  "  Social  Statics," 
all  the  enlightened  states  of  the  world  have  become 
highly  socialistic,  and  have  progressed  in  a  direction 
the  very  opposite  of  that  laid  down  as  the  "  natural 
direction  "  in  Mr.  Spencer's  first  book.  Is  not  this 
general  fact  significant?  Does  it  not  seem  to  indi- 
cate that  universal  causes  are  everywhere  producing 


26  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP.* 

similarly  universal  effects  ?  And  is  it  not  good 
ground  for  inference  that  the  change  in  government 
function  is  not  one  toward  the  total  disappearance  of 
that  function,  but  rather  toward  an  enlargement  of  it 
in  directions  which  have  little  to  do  with  the  mere 
policing  of  the  community  ? 

Let  us  admit,  with  Mr.  Spencer,  that  the  police 
power  of  government  is  tending  rapidly  toward  dis- 
appearance. Does  this  admission  necessarily  imply 
the  further  admission  that  a// the  functions  of  govern- 
ment are  also  disappearing,  or  that  government  is 
not  really  replacing  its  police  functions  with  functions 
of  another  kind  ?  According  to  Mr.  Spencer's  own 
theory,  the  militant  regime  makes  way  for  the  indus- 
trial regime.  This  is  a  structural  change  in  the  life- 
growth  of  society.  But  if  this  be  true  —  and  it  is  — 
government,  so  long  as  it  remains,  cannot  escape  the 
fundamental  principle  of  action.  It,  too,  must  pass 
from  the  militant  to  the  industrial,  and  in  this  very 
process  is  seen  that  "  riot  of  state  ownership  "  about 
which  the  great  individualist  so  bitterly  and  unphilo- 
sophically  complains. 

It  is  but  just  that  while  upon  this  subject  we 
should  make  clear  the  objection  which  seems  to  at- 
tach itself  to  Mr.  Spencer's  position.  The  critics  of 
his  theory  of  individuation  too  often  fall  into  the  error 
of  losing  sight  of  the  important  fact  that  Mr.  Spen- 
cer's arguments,  as  an  advocate  against  socialist  pro- 
grammes, are  only  an  outcome  of  his  position  as  a 
social  philosopher.  He  has  carefully  wrought  out  a 
theory  of  social  forces  which,  in  itself,  is  purely  scien- 
tific. He  holds  that  human  society  is  in  process  of 
evolution  toward  a  state  in  which  the  individual  will 


i  THE  FLOW  OF  MORAL  ENERGY  2/ 

be  completely  adapted  to  social  needs ;  one  in  which 
each  will  so  conduct  himself  as  to  make  for  the  hap- 
piness of  all ;  and  one,  also,  in  which  that  conduct 
of  the  individual  which  shall  most  facilitate  the 
common  good,  shall,  at  the  same  time,  prove  to  be 
the  function  in  which  the  individual  shall  take  most 
pleasure. 

At  this  conclusion  Mr.  Spencer  arrives  by  his  in- 
terpretation of  the  facts  of  history  and  the  facts  of 
life  in  general,  as  well  as  those  of  the  universe  itself. 
In  this  much  he  is  not  an  advocate  in  any  sense  of 
that  word.  He^  has  endeavored  to  understand  the 
direction  in  which  social  forces  are  drifting  by  an 
examination  of  the  method  in  which  social  forces 
have  acted  in  the  past  and  are  acting  in  the  present. 
He  is  convinced  that  he  has  found  that  human  prog- 
ress, political,  industrial,  and  moral,  has  been  brought 
about  by  the  expansion  of  individual  liberty ;  that 
progress  seems  to  depend  upon  the  subordination  of 
the  state  to  the  man,  rather  than  by  the  reverse  pro- 
cess ;  and,  lastly,  that  if  human  society  in  the  future 
is  to  be  free,  rich,  and  moral,  this  state  can  only  be 
brought  about  by  the  continuance  of  that  growth 
which  shall  leave  the  conduct  of  the  individual  as 
free  and  as  unhampered  as  it  is  possible  to  be. 

It  is  here  —  in  this  necessary  and  logical  conclusion 
from  his  premises  —  that  Mr.  Spencer  finds  himself 
the  advocate.  If  social  progress,  he  argues,  has  in 
the  past  depended  upon  the  increase  of  individual 
liberty,  it  is  plain  that  it  must  so  depend  in  the  future. 
When,  therefore,  society  attempts  to  force  its  growth 
by  methods  the  contrary  of  the  natural  one,  that 
growth  must  be  unhealthy  and  vicious.  If  progress 


28  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

depends  upon  the  widening  of  individual  freedom, 
restraint  of  that  freedom  must  be  a  step  backward. 
Hence,  he  advises,  it  is  wise  to  leave  the  individual 
alone,  and  to  restrain  him  in  no  respect  and  in  no 
degree  save  in  so  far  as  is  necessary  to  insure  an 
equal  freedom  to  all. 

It  is  this  view  of  social  growth  which  has  deter- 
mined Mr.  Spencer's  well-known  repugnance  to  state 
interference  of  every  kind.  He  is  opposed,  and  logi- 
cally so,  to  every  form  of  taxation  except  that  which 
secures  the  public  peace.  He  would  reduce  the  ac- 
tivities of  government  to  mere  police  function,  with 
the  belief  that,  in  time,  even  this  slight  show  of 
authority  will  totally  disappear.  He  would  gradually 
eliminate  public  education,  public  libraries  and  hospi- 
tals, government  bureaus  of  every  kind,  and  state  in- 
terference with  every  sort  of  business,  even  with  that 
most  vital  function  of  industry  which  is  filled  by  the 
mints.  Post  offices,  municipal  fire  departments,  gov 
ernment  agencies  of  all  kinds,  save  that  conducted 
by  the  police,  are  clearly  obstructions  in  the  way  of 
social  progress,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer's  philos- 
ophy. All  the  functions  of  the  body  social,  he  con- 
tends, must  be  left  alone  to  the  free  and  unhampered 
action  of  the  private  individual. 

This  advocacy  of  the  illustrious  Englishman  is 
based,  as  we  have  said,  on  his  theory.  A  similar  ad- 
vocacy was  adopted  by  Prudhon,  but  it  was  grounded 
upon  no  such  broad  and  deep  observations  as  those 
which  distinguish  Mr.  Spencer's  profound  system  of 
philosophy.  When,  therefore,  we  say  that  Mr.  Spen- 
cer is  virtually  the  founder  of  this  school,  we  mean 
that  it  was  he  who  first  placed  the  formerly  amor- 


I  THE   FLOW   OF   MORAL   ENERGY  29 

phous  theory  of  individuation  upon  the  very  respect- 
able basis  upon  which  it  rests  to-day. 

The  criticism  of  this  theory  we  have  here  offered 
we  hope  to  vindicate  in  the  pages  which  follow.  No 
advocacy,  however  warm  or  well  intentioned,  can  aid 
us  in  clearing  up  the  hidden  causes  of  natural  phe- 
nomena. We  must  not  regard  society  from  the  view 
point  of  one  of  its  members  with  a  vital  interest  in  its 
forces.  However  tempting  may  be  the  desire  to  take 
part  in  the  reforms  going  forward,  we  must  restrain 
these  desires  from  blinding  us  to  an  impartial  observa- 
tion of  the  facts. 

Is  it  true,  indeed,  that  social  forces  have  fashioned 
the  events  of  history  in  the  way  and  after  the  method 
advanced  by  the  individualistic  theory  ?  Is  it  a  fact 
that  social  growth  has  been  determined  by  the  ever 
widening  liberties  of  the  individual  and  by  the  ever 
contracting  power  and  function  of  the  state  ?  Is  it 
possible  that  the  increased  freedom  and  happiness  of 
the  many  have  come  as  an  issue  not,  indeed,  of  the 
progressive  restriction  of  the  power  and  function  of 
the  state,  but  through  their  expansion  ?  Do  the  facts 
of  history  really  coincide  with  the  one  view  or  with 
the  other?  How  far  do  they  coincide  with  both,  and 
how  are  we  to  ascertain  the  true  nature  of  the  forces 
which  seem  to  issue  in  the  process  of  individuation 
on  the  one  hand,  and  of  socialization  on  the  other  ? 

In  the  quest  of  these  causes  it  should  be  clear  that 
there  is  great  need  of  utmost  caution  lest  we  should 
allow  our  sympathies  to  overrule  our  judgment.  The 
purpose  to  be  held  ever  before  us  can  only  be  de- 
feated by  a  failure  to  consider  all  the  facts  with  the 
same  critical  eye.  We  should  never  lose  our  equa- 


30  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

nimity  when  we  come  upon  a  circumstance  which  does 
not  seem  to  take  its  place  in  our  general  scheme  of 
thought.  We  should  work  upon  the  phenomena  of 
social  life  precisely  as  the  astronomer  regards  the 
oddly  spiral  shape  of  a  nebula,  as  the  economist  sur- 
veys the  rise  and  fall  of  prices,  or  as  the  geologist 
examines  the  formations  of  the  earth's  crust. 

Society  is  a  great  moving  mass  of  living  matter 
presenting  to  our  view  a  bewildering  complexity  of 
power  and  action.  This  mass  of  living  matter  is 
passing  through  a  fluxion,  or  change,  as  complex  in 
its  nature  as  the  structure  is  complex  in  itself.  Hu- 
man society  has  come  down  from  the  ages  through  a 
process  of  transformation  as  plainly  visible  as  that 
transformation  through  which  are  passing  the  general 
life  upon  the  earth,  the  earth  itself,  and  the  whole 
contents  of  universal  space. 

When  we  compare  the  action  of  human  history  with 
other  natural  processes  we  are  compelled  to  admit 
that  that  action  is  very  rapid.  Within  the  period  of 
four  thousand  years  human  society  has  undergone  a 
transformation  of  inconceivable  vastness.  In  the 
society  of  the  present  day  we  can  recognize  traces  of 
institutions  as  old,  and  older,  than  history,  but  these 
are  only  the  vestiges  that  remain  of  the  scaffolding 
whereby  the  present  structure  was  built.  In  all  but 
a  few  fundamental  respects  the  general  body  of  soci- 
ety has  been  profoundly  and  essentially  altered. 

Mankind,  as  a  mass,  seems  to  be  pressing  forward 
to  some  ultimate  go?i  in  which  shall  be  satisfied  that 
moral  sense  about  which  we  have  written  —  a  sense 
which  is  manifestly  growing  keener  and  more  general 
with  the  march  of  time.  There  would  appear  to  be 


I  THE   FLOW   OF   MORAL   ENERGY  31 

in  the  minds  of  civilized  men,  at  least,  a  consciousness 
of  tasks  undone,  of  virtue  unrewarded,  of  toil  unrec- 
ompensed,  of  liberty  unwon.  A  conviction  that  it  is 
not  justice  but  injustice  that  rules  the  world  is  every- 
where apparent.  To  hold  that  the  end  has  already 
come,  that  society  is  forever  to  remain  burdened  with 
the  great  load  of  sorrow  under  which  it  staggers,  is 
to  hold  an  opinion  unique  among  thinking  people. 
We  all  admit  that  transformation  has  taken  place, 
that  the  process  is  still  going  on,  and  that  it  must 
continue  to  go  on  in  the  future. 

Is  there  warrant  in  the  facts  before  us  for  any  con- 
clusion that  there  is  an  ultimate  goal  which,  when 
won,  will  be  the  entire  measure  of  human  purpose  ? 
Can  a  theory  be  framed  which  shall  rationally  ac- 
count for  the  seemingly  contradictory  circumstances 
of  social  life,  and  which  shall  unify  the  two  opposite 
theories  of  social  and  individual  philosophy  which 
have  thus  far  held  the  foremost  places  in  the  general 
contention  ?  Furthermore,  from  an  examination  of 
the  facts  of  history  and  the  phenomena  of  the  social 
life  of  the  present,  will  it  be  possible  to  see  arise  a 
law  of  social  action  the  operation  of  which  will  be 
found  to  be  everywhere  present  in  all  ages  and  in  all 
peoples,  however  so  widely  separated  in  time,  in 
space,  in  association,  and  in  kinship  of  blood  ? 

The  author  of  this  book  is  convinced  that  he  has 
discovered  a  law  which  shall  answer  these  require- 
ments. He  does  not  submit  it  as  an  hypothesis  to 
account  for  facts  already  accomplished  in  human  his- 
tory, but  rather  as  a  demonstrable  process  which  can 
be  proved  in  theory  once  that  certain  basic,  or  funda- 
mental, forces  are  admitted  as  existing.  It  is  a  pro- 


32  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP,  i 

cess  which  has  gone  on  in  the  past,  is  going  on  at  the 
present  time,  and  must  continue  to  operate  so  long  as 
men  live  together  in  associations  such  as  have  been 
known  to  exist  as  far  back  as  history  or  science  can 
definitely  carry  us. 

A  law  such  as  this  is  not  necessarily  the  statement 
of  the  manner  in  which  progress  takes  place.  Far 
from  it.  Progress  is  only  one  phase  of  social  action. 
There  is  a  backward  as  well  as  a  forward  flow  of 
social  force  ;  degeneration  as  well  as  generation ;  de- 
cline as  well  as  rise.  Any  generic  law  of  social  life 
must  account  for  both  of  these  phases.  In  the  state- 
ment of  the  formula  of  the  law  we  must  include  every 
conceivable  stage  of  social  growth  or  decay.  And, 
furthermore,  the  law  must  not  be  merely  a  general- 
ization based  upon  inductive  observation,  but  must  be 
theoretically  applicable  to  a  purely  hypothetical  so- 
ciety made  up  of  members  having  essentially  the 
same  basic  physical  and  mental  characters  as  men. 

As  it  is  upon  these  basic  characters  must  rest  the 
law  of  social  action  we  have  described,  let  us  now 
proceed  to  glance  at  the  nature  of  these  root-forces 
out  of  which  arise  all  social  organic  growths,  human 
or  otherwise.  For  it  is  in  these  forces,  and  only  in 
these,  can  be  found  any  theory  or  any  law  of  social 
action  which  will  bear  the  test  of  rational  criticism  or 
of  common  sense. 


CHAPTER   II 

BASIC  FORCES  AND  FUNCTIONS 

IT  would  seem  to  be  a  self-evident  truth  that  to  all 
action  there  must  be  a  purpose  which  is  served  or  an 
end  which  is  gained.  To  the  ordinary  affairs  of 
human  life  this  statement  would  seem  to  be  especially 
applicable ;  and  when  we  consider  extraordinary 
affairs  as,  for  example,  the  great  and  stirring  events 
of  history,  the  force  of  the  seeming  truth  becomes 
striking  in  a  high  degree. 

In  most  of  the  actions  of  individual  men  the  pur- 
pose, or  end  in  view,  is  obvious  and  easy  to  under- 
stand. Men  eat  to  satisfy  their  hunger ;  they  build 
houses  to  protect  themselves  from  the  elements ;  they 
bathe,  and  regulate  their  hours  of  sleep  to  secure 
health  and  a  consciousness  of  ease;  they  dress  for 
warmth  or  for  the  purpose  of  conforming  with  the 
fashions ;  they  absorb  stimulating  beverages  in  order 
to  enjoy  the  momentary  excitation  which  flows  from 
this  habit;  they  pass  about  from  place  to  place  to 
encompass  the  ends  of  business  or  recreation ;  they 
read  books  or  newspapers  to  gratify  their  aesthetic 
tastes  or  their  natural  curiosity. 

Turning  our  attention  from  individuals  to  groups 
of  individuals  we  see  the  same  order  of  fact.  A 
community  constructs  a  railroad  to  further  the  ends 
D  33 


34  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

of  transportation  —  to  carry  men  and  things  about 
from  one  place  to  another.  It  organizes  a  system  of 
government  to  insure  peace  and  to  administer  the 
ends  of  justice.  It  pays  taxes  to  gather  and  equip  an 
army  which  shall  protect  the  common  welfare  from 
obtrusive  or  aggressive  communities  near-by.  The 
purpose  of  all  these  acts  seems  to  be  perfectly  clear, 
perfectly  intelligible,  obvious  and  easy  to  the  simplest 
of  intellects. 

It  would  seem,  too,  that  this  principle  is  applicable 
to  orders  of  things  other  than  man  and  living  crea- 
tures in  general.  The  comet,  drifting  from  unknown 
places  of  nether  space,  speeds  toward  the  sun  as  if 
busily  bent  upon  reaching  its  destination ;  the  river 
flows  on  to  the  sea,  snow  and  rain  fall  toward  the 
centre  of  the  earth,  and  the  planets  revolve  in  their 
orbits  with  apparently  perfect  sequence  of  movement 
and  an  apparently  well  devised  plan. 

But  these  movements  would  appear  to  differ  from 
those  of  sentient  creatures  in  that  the  latter  are  seen 
to  have  some  conscious  purpose  ;  that  is  to  say,  their 
actions  are  consciously  directed  toward  the  ends  that 
are  sought ;  whereas  the  motions  of  inanimate  things 
are  apparently  without  this  peculiar  qualification. 
And  yet  if  we  dive  a  little  more  deeply  under  the 
surface  of  things,  this  difference  loses  much  of  its 
importance.  Let  us  compare  the  comparatively 
minute  and  insignificant  actions  of  an  ant  with  those 
of  a  giant  world  like  Saturn,  with  his  rings  and  his 
satellites.  The  purpose  of  the  ant's  motions  is  obvious. 
But  if  there  is  purpose  in  the  actions  of  the  ant 
why  should  we  deny  it  to  the  vast  and  magnificent 
order  of  motion  observed  in  the  great  luminous-ringed 


n  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  35 

world  of  the  solar  system  ?  We  do  not  know  that 
Saturn  is  itself  imbued  with  life  and  sentiency  such 
as  those  possessed  by  the  ant ;  but  would  it  not  be 
irrational  to  exclude  from  the  action  of  the  planet  a 
purpose  of  some  kind,  either  to  be  found  in  the  planet 
itself,  or  in  some  Power  by  which  its  mighty  mass  is 
held  in  motion,  rhythmic  and  sure,  and  when  compared 
with  the  activities  of  the  ant,  endless  in  time  ?  For, 
it  may  be  asked,  if  there  be  no  end  of  any  kind  served 
by  the  stupendous  movements  of  the  planets,  why  is 
their  action  so  regular,  and  why,  in  fact,  are  they 
there  at  all  ? 

This  may  seem  to  be  a  childish  question,  but  it 
assumes  a  tremendous  import  to  man  when  we  turn 
from  the  planets  and  apply  the  query  to  man  himself. 
A  very  little  reflection  will  make  this  clear.  For,  if 
we  eliminate  the  obvious  purpose  existing  in  the 
minds  of  men  for  their  ordinary,  or  extraordinary, 
actions,  we  are  looking  at  men  from  that  very  point 
of  view  from  which  we  have  been  looking  at  the 
planets.  We  know  very  well  why  men  eat.  They 
eat  to  satisfy  their  hunger ;  and  we  know  that  in  such 
satisfaction  they  indirectly,  and,  for  the  most  part, 
unwittingly,  sustain  life.  But  eliminate  the  purpose 
found  in  the  satisfaction  of  hunger,  and  we  are  re- 
duced to  the  query,  Why  do  they  live  at  all  ? 

Thus  we  are  brought  to  the  conviction  that  the 
word  "  purpose  "  is  at  very  best  an  inadequate  one 
when  we  attempt  to  define  it  by  any  terms  other  than 
the  conscious  desire  of  a  sentient  being  to  gratify  a 
want.  Yet,  such  a  narrow  and  empty  definition  of  the 
word  would  be  shocking  to  the  minds  of  most  intelli- 
gent persons.  Shall  we  say  that  there  is  no  higher 


36  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

purpose,  no  general  and  ultimate  end  served  by  the 
existence  of  the  human  race,  save  that  to  be  found  in 
the  vulgar  wants  of  the  body  or  even  in  the  higher 
aspirations  of  the  mind  ?  Is  the  only  purpose  and 
the  only  end  of  man's  existence  that  which  he  can  see 
in  the  common,  or  even  in  the  uncommon,  motives 
which  animate  him  and  define  the  bounds  of  his 
intent  and  his  activities  ?  Is  there,  perchance,  a  pur- 
pose for  his  existence  which  is  not  to  be  found  in 
these  obvious  actions,  these  proximate  ends,  these 
immediate  gratifications  ?  A  purpose  over  and  above 
the  wants  of  the  individual  and  the  desires  of  nations  ? 
An  end  toward  which  he  is  drawn  as  helplessly  and  as 
surely  as  the  planet  is  moved  in  its  course  or  the 
stream  in  its  bed  onward  to  the  sea  ? 

This  is  the  meaning  in  which  we  shall  use  the 
word  "  purpose  "  here ;  and  if  we  wrench  it  some- 
what from  its  narrow  sense,  we  do  so  only  because 
it  would  appear  that  some  such  process  were  needed 
to  convey  an  idea  which  shall  unify  natural  forces 
operating  in  things  that  live  with  natural  forces  at 
work  in  what  has  been  called  —  rightly  or  wrongly 
—  the  "inanimate  world." 

If  we  are  perfectly  honest  with  ourselves,  we  will 
admit  that  it  is  vain  for  the  human  intellect  to  try  to 
discern  a  general  purpose,  such  as  we  have  hinted  at 
above,  in  the  large  operations  of  nature.  We  know 
very  little  about  the  stars.  Millions  of  suns  rush 
hither  and  thither  through  space  with  no  conceivable 
fixed  process  of  action.  Some  of  them  move  slowly, 
some  with  unthinkable  rapidity.  If  we  leave  the 
stars  and  come  to  our  own  solar  system,  all  we  can 
observe  is  a  rhythmic  revolution  about  axis  and  in 


ii  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  37 

orbit  —  a  revolution  in  which  there  is  no  design  per- 
ceptible or  even  conceivable  to  the  human  intellect. 
Upon  the  earth  the  same  ceaseless  activity  is  every- 
where manifest  and  the  same  evident  lack  of  purpose. 
Evaporation,  condensation,  precipitation,  the  move- 
ments of  air  currents,  electric  energy,  the  flow  of 
the  tides,  the  action  of  glaciers,  fluctuations  of  the 
earth's  crust,  the  gravitation  of  water  to  the  sea  — 
all  these  things  proceed  in  an  order  as  regular  as 
that  which  marks  the  revolution  of  the  planet  in  its 
orbit  or  its  rotation  about  itself.  Yet  who  can  answer 
the  simple  question  of  the  child  who  asks,  Why  ? 

As  we  approach  our  own  sentiency,  and  look  about 
us  upon  the  great  tide  of  life  abounding  upon  the 
earth,  the  difficulty  grows  no  smaller.  With  living 
things  there  is  the  same  ceaseless  flow  of  action  as 
that  observed  in  what  we  have  been  accustomed  to 
call  "  dead  matter."  The  races  of  the  earth,  animal 
and  vegetable,  have  come  down  from  old  time  in  an 
unbroken  sequence,  changing  into  forms  determined 
by  forces  as  blind  —  so  far  as  the  most  careful  scru- 
tiny can  see  —  as  the  force  of  gravitation  which  draws 
the  river  downward  to  the  sea,  or  the  force  of  the 
sun's  heat  which  draws  the  vapor  up.  Purpose  there 
is,  and  has  been,  if  by  the  term  we  are  to  understand 
the  immediate  and  proximate  end  of  action.  And 
final  purpose  we  cannot  know  save  as  that  general 
end  of  action  which  appears  when  the  several  and 
proximate  ends  are  completed  in  one  united  sum. 

For  the  sake  of  illustration  let  us  consider  the 
actions  of  a  man  who  purchases  a  coat  of  a  certain 
fashion.  He  goes  to  his  tailor,  and  in  doing  so  he 
uses  the  muscles  of  his  legs,  calls  into  his  service  a 


38  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

cab,  ascends  a  flight  of  stairs,  and  submits  himself  to 
be  measured.  Here  we  see  in  process  several  varied 
and  complicated  actions  on  the  part  of  the  man  him- 
self, associated  with  like  groups  of  other  and  complex 
motions  on  the  part  of  the  cabman  and  his  horse,  and 
of  the  tailor  and  his  helpers.  But  is  it  not  plain  that 
the  obvious  purpose  of  all  these,  and  of  still  others  in 
the  more  remote  background,  is  the  possession  of  the 
garment  which  was  desired  ? 

The  purchaser  of  the  coat  may  have  other  and 
larger  ends  in  view.  The  possession  of  the  coat  may 
be  only  the  means  to  another  end,  let  us  say  attend- 
ance at  an  evening  reception  at  which  the  owner  of 
the  garment  is  to  meet  a  politician  of  influence,  who 
is  to  secure  him  an  appointment  abroad  which,  in 
turn,  shall  enable  him  to  study  the  customs  of  a 
strange  people  in  whom  he  has  long  been  interested. 
It  would  be  absurd  to  point  out  these  very  common- 
place connections  did  we  not  bear  in  mind  that  the 
illustration  goes  to  prove  the  analogy,  if  no  more,  of 
human  conduct  to  the  processes  seen  in  nature  at 
large,  animate  or  inanimate,  and,  furthermore,  clearly 
to  illustrate  our  meaning  of  the  word  "  purpose." 

To  return  to  our  illustration  of  the  river.  A  stream 
flowing  down  a  steep  gradient  abruptly  changes  its 
course,  and  runs  in  a  direction  at  right  angles  with 
its  former  direction.  The  change  is  caused  by  an 
obstacle  in  the  formation  of  the  earth's  surface.  The 
purpose  here  served  by  the  action  of  the  current  is 
the  avoidance  of  the  obstacle.  Many  such  changes 
are  made  in  the  entire  course  of  the  stream,  and  each 
has  its  particular  cause  and  its  proximate  purpose ; 
but  the  sum  of  all  of  these  actions  and  of  all  these  ends 


ii  BASIC   FORCES  AND   FUNCTIONS  39 

is  contained  in  the  remote  end  which  is  accomplished 
when  the  stream  reaches  the  level  of  the  sea.  A 
person  whose  range  of  observation  was  limited  to  a 
few  of  these  shiftings  in  the  current  of  the  river,  and 
who  had  no  knowledge  of  that  remote  destination 
upon  which  the  stream  was  bent,  could  readily  under- 
stand the  end  served  in  each  particular  variation  of 
the  stream's  channel.  So  far  as  his  observation  could 
carry  him,  his  conclusions  would  be  perfectly  true. 
And  is  it  not  manifest  that  the  self-same  logic  applies 
to  the  purchaser  of  the  coat,  the  sum  of  whose  motions 
may  be  likened  to  those  of  a  river  which,  flowing  with 
innumerable  changes  of  direction,  and  a  thousand  vari- 
ations in  the  speed  of  its  current,  is  brought  at  last  to 
the  accomplishment  of  that  purpose  toward  which  all 
its  manifold  and  complicated  activities  carry  it  ? 

Let  us  then  define  purpose  as  that  object  which  is 
discernibly  sought  by  action ;  and  define  highest  pur- 
pose as  that  discernible  object  toward  which  the  sum 
of  all  actions  is  directed.  With  the  limitations  f>f  this 
definition  in  mind,  we  can  safely  set  out  upon  the 
quest  of  an  object  so  formidable  as  the  purpose  of 
mankind  npon  the  earth.  Nor  need  we  be  discouraged 
by  the  seeming  stupendousness  of  the  prospect.  An 
undertaking  of  apparently  grave  difficulty  becomes 
more  hopeful  when  we  address  ourselves  calmly  to  a 
close  examination  of  its  nature  and  its  causes ;  and 
problems  of  seemingly  hopeless  complexity  are  some- 
times made  clear  when  the  relations  which  exist  be- 
tween their  simpler  parts  are  perceived.  Proceeding 
from  simple  quantities  and  their  relations  to  each 
other,  we  begin  to  see  the  bearing  of  these  relations 
on  the  relations  between  other  quantities.  Thus  we 


40  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

rise  to  a  comprehension  of  groups  of  quantities  (and 
their  relations  together)  as  associated  with  other 
groups  of  quantities  (and  their  relations  between 
themselves).  In  this  analysis  we  are  led  to  generali- 
zations which  are  seen  to  have  an  intimate  relation 
with  other  generalizations  arising  simultaneously ; 
and  in  the  last  and  highest  generalization  we  find  a 
solution  of  the  problem  which,  at  first  glance,  seemed 
inscrutably  obscure. 

This  is  perfectly  true  of  every  generalization  of 
science,  and  by  generalization  is  meant  what  is  ordi- 
narily called  a  "  law  of  nature."  It  is  true  of  Kep- 
ler's laws  as  well  as  of  the  law  of  gravitation  and  the 
law  of  natural  selection ;  of  the  conservation  of 
energy,  of  the  indestructibility  of  matter,  and  of  other 
and  numerous  laws  formulated  by  special  sciences, 
and  approved  and  accepted  by  scientific  standards, 
although  not  so  familiar  to  the  man  of  ordinary  cul- 
ture as  are  those  grand  and  striking  generalizations 
which'have  been  named  above. 

Any  theory  which  shall  satisfactorily  explain  the 
phenomena  of  social  life  must  be  built  upon  the  lines 
here  indicated.  If  we  are  to  arrive  at  a  generaliza- 
tion, or  a  law,  which  shall  formulate  the  process 
through  which  society  passes,  we  must  arrive  at  our 
conclusions  only  by  understanding  the  particular 
aspects  of  the  general  movement.  We  must  under- 
stand, first,  the  individual  unit  itself ;  then  the  rela- 
tions between  individuals ;  then  the  relations  which 
groups  of  individuals  bear  to  other  groups ;  and  lastly 
the  relations  borne  by  individuals,  by  groups,  and  by 
groups  of  groups  to  the  whole.  Having  done  this, 
we  will  have  before  us  the  parts  of  the  process  we 


II  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  41 

desire  to  comprehend ;  and  then  by  ascertaining  the  re- 
lations which  these  parts  bear  to  the  sum  of  them  all, 
we  will  be  enabled  to  state  those  relations  in  the  form 
of  a  generalization  which  shall  be  the  law  by  which 
the  process  operates. 

Reverting  to  our  illustration  of  the  river,  it  will  be 
admitted  that  he  who  follows  the  river  from  its  source, 
observing  its  various  deviations  of  direction,  cannot 
but  ascertain  the  end  of  its  action  when  he  finds  that 
it  empties  its  volume  into  the  sea.  He  can  then 
understand  its  persistent  avoidance  of  obstacles,  its 
tortuous  windings,  its  hurrying  over  steep  declivities, 
even  its  backward  flow,  at  times,  in  the  direction 
opposite  to  that  toward  which  its  general  action 
tends.  In  drawing  an  analogy  between  the  purpose 
of  a  river  gravitating  to  the  sea  and  the  purpose  of 
human  society  let  it  not  be  supposed  that  we  are 
attempting  to  prove  the  equality,  either  in  kind  or  in 
degree,  of  these  two  things.  The  comparison  is 
made  only  to  show  that  a  knowledge  of  the  two 
things  may  be  won  by  the  same  general  method. 

In  asking,  What  is  the  purpose  of  man  upon  the 
earth  ?  we  will  find  the  suggestions  made  in  the  last 
paragraph  but  one  of  some  use.  Light  may  be 
thrown  upon  the  purpose  of  man  upon  the  earth,  if 
we  determine,  first,  what  is  the  purpose  of  men  upon 
the  earth.  But  before  proceeding  to  this  inquiry,  it 
will  be  advisable  to  examine  into  the  life  of  an  indi- 
vidual organism  much  lower  in  the  scale  of  creation 
than  the  human  species. 

Let  us  take  for  example  a  single  stalk  of  Indian 
corn,  or  maize.  We  can  watch  the  cycle  of  the  life 
of  a  common  corn-stalk  from  its  birth  to  its  death. 


42  THE  LEVEL   OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

By  a  mechanical  process  of  assimilation  and  excre- 
tion, the  plant  absorbs  water  from  the  earth  and  gives 
off  oxygen.  In  this  operation  are  developed,  from 
the  first  signs  of  growth  in  the  tiny,  tender  shoot,  all 
the  parts  and  substance  of  the  full-grown  plant ;  the 
jointed  stalk  with  its  top  crowned  by  a  beautiful 
terminal  panicle ;  the  generative  organs  enclosed  by 
protecting  sheaths ;  and  the  strong  framework  whose 
structure  is  nicely  calculated  to  bear  the  weight  of  the 
ears  when  full-grown  and  mature.  In  the  growth  of 
this  giant  blade  of  grass  the  only  purpose  visible  is 
the  very  process  itself  of  this  growth,  maturity,  and 
fecundation.  The  function  and  purpose  of  vegeta- 
ble life  were  well  described  by  Alexander  Pope  in 
one  of  his  biting  epigrams  upon  a  stupid  individual 
who,  he  said,  was 

"  Fixed  like  a  plant  to  his  peculiar  spot, 
To  draw  nutrition,  propagate,  and  rot." 

Search  as  we  may  for  any  purpose  other  than  that 
so  tersely  defined  by  the  poet,  and  we  must  fail. 
Nutrition  and  propagation  are  the  sole  purposes  of 
all  the  exuberant  activities  of  vegetable  life,  from  the 
microscopic  bacillus  to  the  gigantic  palm. 

But  we  find  that  the  same  truth  holds  when  we 
ascend  a  step  in  the  scale  and  pass  from  vegetable 
life  to  the  protozoa,  or  those  creatures  in  which  the 
beginnings  of  life  called  animal  are  found.  As  we 
advance  still  higher  to  the  observation  of  more  highly 
organized  forms  of  animal  life,  the  same  two  purposes 
are  the  only  ones  discernible.  The  numberless  tribes 
of  animals  in  the  vast  oceans  of  the  earth  are,  so  far 
as  man  has  been  able  to  find  out,  moved  by  two 


II  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  43 

forces  only  —  those  forces  which  impel  the  organism 
to  activities  sustaining  the  life  of  the  individual  and 
maintaining  the  life  of  the  race.  This  truth  remains 
when  we  transfer  our  attention  from  aquatic  animals 
to  those  inhabiting  the  land.  Everywhere  through- 
out that  part  of  creation  within  the  range  of  human  ob- 
servation, plant  or  animal,  large  or  minute,  directs  its 
energies  to  these  two  ends  and  to  these  two  ends  alone. 

Must  we  include  man  himself  in  this  broad  gen- 
eralization ?  Are  we  to  reduce  man  to  the  level  of 
beasts  ;  to  allow  him  no  more  latitude  in  his  purposes 
and  aims  than  that  allowed  to  the  microscopic  germ 
of  cholera  or  tuberculosis ;  to  extend  the  category  of 
Pope's  clod  to  the  highest  productions  of  the  human 
race,  and  to  place  a  Newton  and  a  Shakespeare  be- 
side the  sea  urchin  and  the  sponge  ?  To  suggest 
such  inference  naturally  leads  us  to  inquire  wherein 
the  purpose  of  man  differs  from  that  of  all  other 
animals,  if  differ  it  really  does.  The  distinction  ordi- 
narily made  to  separate  the  conduct  of  men  from  that 
of  the  rest  of  animate  creation  gives  to  human  action 
an  intelligent  purpose,  while  this  quality  is  denied  to 
the  conduct  of  all  creatures  below  the  level  of  man- 
kind. This  distinction  was  pointed  out  by  Rene 
Descartes  who  invented  the  theory  that  lower  animals 
were  automata  and  that  their  vital  functions  were 
merely  mechanical  movements,  such  as  were  seen  in 
the  ingenious  devices  known  as  puppet  shows.  But 
to  man  he  gave  intelligent  action ;  i.e.  action  ration- 
ally directed  toward  preconceived  ends. 

This  distinction  would  seem  to  be  a  valid  one  upon 
a  superficial  consideration  of  the  facts.  It  would 
appear  at  first  sight  that  the  activities  of  the  painter 


44  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

of  a  great  historical  picture  were  different  in  kind, 
as  well  as  in  degree,  from  those  of  a  hawk  searching 
for  prey  and  seizing  it  when  found.  Or  that  the 
activities,  mental  and  bodily,  of  the  musician  who 
creates  a  symphony  were  in  no  wise  to  be  compared 
with  those  of  an  East  Indian  vampire.  But  such  is 
not  the  verdict  of  comparative  psychology.  An 
intimate  study  of  the  forces  which  impel  the  painter 
and  the  hawk,  the  musician  and  the  bat,  will  reveal 
identity  of  motive  in  all  four  instances. 

It  is  not  precisely  that  the  painter  and  the  musician 
are  spurred  by  economic  motives  as  directly  as  are  bird 
and  beast ;  but  it  will  not  be  denied  that  all  are  ani- 
mated by  a  desire,  the  gratification  of  which  will  bring 
pleasure  —  pleasure  to  the  bird  and  bat  in  the  con- 
sumption of  food  secured,  and  to  the  painter  and 
musician  in  the  concrete  expression  of  their  intimate 
thoughts.  The  desire  resident  in  the  animal  is 
mental,  quite  as  much  so  as  the  desire  which  moves 
the  man.  Both  desires  are  gratified  by  activities  as 
purely  mechanical  as  those  of  any  device  artificially 
wrought  by  the  genius  of  mechanical  construction ; 
and  the  satisfactions  themselves  pertain  to  the  mental 
perceptions  of  both  organisms.  The  profound  re- 
searches of  George  John  Romanes  into  the  intellectual 
life  of  animals  leaves  little  room  for  doubt  of  this  uni- 
formity of  the  psychic  life  of  all  orders  of  sentient 
beings  —  an  uniformity  which  had  been  before  be- 
lieved and  accepted  by  many,  and  which  hardly 
needed  the  inductive  verification  in  the  establishment 
of  which  Romanes  has  been  at  so  very  great  pains. 

If  we  say,  then,  that  happiness  is  the  end  and 
purpose  of  the  actions  of  individual  men,  we  shall 


ii  BASIC   FORCES  AND   FUNCTIONS  45 

postulate  that  with  which  all  men  will  readily  agree. 
It  matters  little  what  may  be  the  nature  of  the 
happiness  sought,  what  may  be  the  objects  in  which  it 
finds  expression,  or  the  means  taken  to  reach  the 
end  desired.  Neither  are  we  concerned  whether  the 
happiness  sought  be  positive  or  negative  ;  whether 
it  consist  in  the  possession  of  pleasure,  or  in  the 
absence  of  pain.  To  be  deprived  of  something  which 
in  itself  is  a  positive  pleasure,  may  be,  and  often  is, 
a  cause  of  positive  pain.  Extremes  meet  here  as 
elsewhere.  And  in  precise  proportion  as  the  pleasure 
is  great,  or  the  pain  keen,  will  the  resultant  exercise 
of  energy  prove  to  be  intense.  There  is  no  exception 
to  this  rule.  The  possession  of  happiness,  here  or 
hereafter,  is  the  purpose  toward  which  all  human 
actions  are  directed.  The  widest  antitheses  of  con- 
duct are  thus  explained,  and  thus  only.  In  this 
respect  the  monk  and  the  voluptuary,  the  spendthrift 
and  the  miser  are  one.  In  the  entire  range  of 
asceticism  —  from  the  pious  person  who  deprives 
himself  of  slight  indulgences,  or  lengthens  his  prayer 
during  Lent,  to  the  friar  who  scourges  his  body  and 
sleeps  in  a  coffin  —  the  purpose  ever  in  mind  is  happi- 
ness, however  so  extraordinarily  conceived.  So 
powerful,  indeed,  may  the  motive  become  that  in  the 
very  pain  which  accompanies  ascetic  practices  the 
ascetic  himself  may  find  a  kind  of  pleasure  —  per- 
verted and  abnormal  if  you  like,  but  pleasure  still. 

However  minutely  we  may  examine  the  motives, 
the  actions,  and  the  purposes  of  animals  and  men, 
we  can  find  no  differences  between  them  save  that 
of  degree  in  complexity.  If  the  purpose  of  a  man 
in  painting  a  picture  is  an  intelligent  purpose,  so  is 


46  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

that  of  the  dog  or  the  horse  who  sets  out  to  find  his 
way  home  by  scent,  or  by  the  observation  of  familiar 
landmarks.  The  one  is  only  a  larger  intelligence 
than  the  other,  and  both  are  alike  in  kind.  The 
difference  between  the  conduct  of  a  kitten,  which 
seeks  a  comfortable  spot  on  the  hearth  rug,  and  that  of 
a  child  which  strives  to  obtain  the  possession  of  a 
toy,  will  be  admitted  to  be  slight.  But  great  as  may 
be  the  difference  between  the  conduct  of  the  child 
and  that  of  a  statesman  who  designs  a  great  reform 
in  government,  the  difference  is  one  of  quantity  only. 
There  is  comparatively  little  intelligence  in  the  activi- 
ties of  the  child ;  comparatively  much  intelligence  in 
those  of  the  architect  of  a  realm. 

If,  now,  we  inquire  into  the  nature  of  the  happiness 
sought  for  by  men  generally,  we  will  find  that,  at 
bottom,  it  is  precisely  the  same  as  that  which  has 
been  observed  in  animals  lower  than  man  in  the  scale 
of  creation.  It  may  be  stated  that  the  first  purpose 
arousing  the  energies  of  the  individual  is  to  live.  In 
order  to  live  he  must  acquire  by  personal  exertion, 
either  of  himself  or  of  others,  the  food  which  sustains 
his  life.  In  doing  this  he  is  impelled  by  the  strong- 
est motive  of  his  nature.  One  by  one  we  may  strike 
down  the  other  purposes  spurring  him  into  action ; 
remove  from  him  all  the  concomitants  of  civilization ; 
take  him  from  the  association  of  his  fellow-men  and 
isolate  him  from  the  contact  of  all  but  creatures 
which  may  be  of  use  to  him  in  supplying  the  wants 
of  his  vital  functions  —  and  this  purpose  will  remain 
the  motive  of  all  of  his  activities,  bodily  and  mental. 

Sustentation  of  the  life  of  the  individual  is  thus 
found  to  be  the  first  motive  of  all  human  action. 


II  BASIC   FORCES  AND   FUNCTIONS  47 

Without  this,  the  individual  can  be  happy  in  no  de- 
gree whatsoever,  and  he  will  rate  his  happiness  by 
the  measure  in  which  the  functions  of  nutrition  and 
assimilation  are  satisfied.  With  him,  food  which  is 
at  once  agreeable  to  the  taste,  readily  digested,  and 
easy  of  accessibility,  is  the  greatest  desideratum; 
and  the  continuous  life  of  his  body,  as  free  as  may 
be  from  disagreeable  exertions  in  the  obtainment  of 
the  food  required,  is  the  highest  purpose  of  all  of 
his  energies. 

Given  the  fulfilment  of  this  first  purpose  we  find 
that  from  its  accomplishment  will  arise  another,  as 
powerful,  in  its  way,  as  the  first.  That  is  the  pro- 
duction of  other  individuals,  each  of  which  has  all 
the  physical  attributes  of  the  parent,  and  is  moved 
by  like  desires.  In  the  functions  by  which  these 
two  purposes  are  served  —  the  healthy  nutrition  of 
the  individual,  and  the  reproduction  of  like  individuals 
—  the  great  mass  of  mankind  finds  its  keenest  enjoy- 
ments and  its  most  desirable  ends  ;  and  these  are  the 
two  objects  pursued  by  all  but  an  insignificant  part 
of  the  human  race.  All  other  activities  are  secondary 
to  those  which  serve  these  two  ends.  Pleasures  of 
the  intellect  and  the  emotions  are  only  possible  —  at 
least  for  the  majority  of  men  —  when  the  basic  func- 
tions of  life  are  left  free  to  operate  with  more  or  less 
fruition.  ^Esthetic  and  emotional  enjoyments  are 
entirely  dependent  on  physiological  enjoyments. 
Every  truly  pleasurable  process  of  the  mind  —  apart 
from  those  perverted  and  abnormal  ones  already 
noted  in  the  case  of  the  ascetic  —  may  be  measured 
by  the  quantity  in  which  the  functions  of  life  have 
been  satisfied. 


48  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

In  some  men,  it  is  true,  we  may  find  that  the  func- 
tions of  the  body  are  displaced  in  large  measure  by 
the  functions  of  the  mind  ;  that  the  satisfactions  de- 
rived from  the  emotions  and  the  intellect  may  be 
disproportionately  large  as  compared  with  those 
derived  from  the  functions  of  nutrition  and  propaga- 
tion. But  it  will  be  observed  that  these  are  excep- 
tional cases.  They  vary  from  the  norm  in  a  lower 
degree  than  does  the  ascetic,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  sybarite  on  the  other.  But  of  the  norm,  the 
general  proposition  holds  good.  Pleasures  of  the 
imagination  and  of  the  intellect  are  strengthened 
when  the  purely  animal  desires  are  normally  gratified. 
From  that  gratification  flow  all  the  varied  desires  and 
activities  of  men,  and  out  of  it  arise  the  manifold 
structures  and  functions  of  the  minds  of  men  even 
as  the  trunk,  the  branches,  and  leaves  of  a  tree  arise 
from  the  roots  in  the  earth  beneath.  Beautiful  as 
the  tree  may  be,  the  lustre  of  its  foliage  and  the 
symmetry  of  its  form  depend  upon  the  vital  process 
going  on  under  the  ground  at  its  roots.  Leaves  and 
twigs,  even  whole  branches  and  parts  of  the  trunk, 
may  be  destroyed,  but  vegetation  will  still  go  on  so 
long  as  the  channels  of  the  basic  forces  which  move 
the  structure  to  activity  be  not  obstructed. 

It  would  seem,  however,  that  the  twofold  process 
of  these  basic  forces  and  functions  disclose  a  single- 
ness of  purpose  in  its  general  operation.  However 
well  the  individual  may  serve  the  purpose  of  sustain- 
ing his  life,  the  lives  of  particular  individuals  seem  to 
be  secondary  to  the  inclusive  purpose  of  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  race.  The  force  which  moves  man  to 
eat,  in  order  that  he  may  live,  is  secondary  to  the 


n  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  49 

higher  force  that  moves  him  to  propagate  in  order 
that  the  race  may  not  die.  The  "  Prodigality  of 
Nature  "  is  a  proverb,  and  much  observation  has  been 
made  as  to  the  means  by  which  races  are  maintained 
in  spite  of  the  forces  which  tend  to  destroy  them. 
The  individual  is  of  little  account  in  nature  except  in 
so  far  as  he  serves  the  purpose  of  procreating  his 
kind.  In  the  process  of  natural  selection  the  mechan- 
ical forces  at  work  destroy  countless  individuals,  but 
the  forces  all  aim  at  the  maintenance  and  increase  of 
races,  the  race  of  man  included. 

In  human  society  the  action  of  all  forces  is  auto- 
matic, and  as  much  so  as  it  is  in  any  other  part  of 
nature.  We  see  that  the  interests  of  the  individual 
are  always  made  to  serve  the  interests  of  the  commu- 
nity. Men  may  die,  but  man  may  not.  The  posses- 
sions, not  only,  but  the  lives  of  individuals  are 
sacrificed  for  the  common  good.  Extinction  is  as 
abhorrent  to  a  community,  a  nation,  or  a  race,  as  it 
is  to  an  individual.  The  individual  will  joyfully  sac- 
rifice, even  at  great  pain,  parts  of  himself  in  order 
that  his  life  may  be  saved.  Nations  sacrifice  their 
individual  members,  and  groups  and  classes  of  their 
individual  members,  that  the  nation  itself  may  sur- 
vive. Man  is  the  strongest,  the  most  constructive, 
and  also  the  most  destructive,  animal  on  the  earth. 
To  serve  his  purpose  of  individual  and  racial  life  he 
levies  tribute  on  all  nature,  organic  and  inorganic. 
His  life  and  propagation  mean  suffering  and  death 
to  myriads  of  creatures  beneath  him.  Out  of  the 
death  of  inferior  organisms  arises  the  life  of  the  human 
race.  From  the  poignant  pain  of  weaker  sentient 
creatures  we  see  emerge  the  smiling  face  of  human 


50  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

joy.  Individuals  among  men  must  die  that  the  sor- 
row of  their  fellow-men  may  be  assuaged.  Tears 
and  blood  are  the  foundation-stones  on  which  the 
structure  of  human  liberty  is  built,  and  man  moves 
forward  upon  a  highway  laid  down  in  death  and 
destruction. 

It  is  in  this  upward  and  outward  growth  of  human- 
ity that  we  are  to  seek  the  origin  of  that  widening 
process  of  moral  thought  described  in  our  first  chapter. 
And  it  is  in  the  forces  and  functions  underlying  that 
growth  that  we  can  most  easily  and  certainly  ascertain 
the  beginnings  of  moral  ideas  —  ideas,  that  is,  which 
find  expression  in  the  consciousness  of  Tightness  and 
wrongness  and  in  the  common  conduct  of  men. 

Much  of  the  current  discussion  upon  social  matters 
is  made  highly  obscure  by  the  use  of  terms  which  are 
forced  upon  it  by  the  needs  of  scientific  diction. 
Professor  Huxley  once  said  that  many  learned 
writers  place  a  capital  letter  upon  words  such  as  the 
Unconditioned,  the  Unlimited,  and  others  of  like 
kind,  to  frighten  the  common  people  —  much  the 
same  as  grenadiers  are  topped  with  ferocious  head- 
gear. The  grenadier  is  seldom  as  fierce  as  he  appears 
to  be.  So  it  is  with  many  books  written  upon  sub- 
jects of  living  interest  to  the  average  man,  but  which 
are  couched  in  terms  calculated  to  affright  that  per- 
son who  is  easily  impressed  by  exteriors. 

When  one  reads  of  the  "  Physical  Basis  of  Ethics," 
one  is  tempted  to  drop  the  subject  then  and  there  if 
one  have  no  pressing  need  to  pursue  it.  But  formid- 
able as  the  phrase  may  appear,  it  hides  no  really  diffi- 
cult matter.  Scarcely  more  difficult  will  be  found  the 
subject  covered  by  the  no  less  seemingly  impressive, 


ii  .         BASIC   FORCES  AND   FUNCTIONS  51 

if  more  obscure,  expression,  "  Moral  Philosophy." 
These  terms  are  used  only  to  designate  those  ques- 
tions in  which  every  thinking  person  finds  an  interest. 
The  origin  of  the  idea  of  right  and  wrong  is  to  be 
found  in  the  large  and  general  facts  of  human  life, 
rather  than  in  the  solving  of  some  remote  and 
abstruse  problem  which  has  very  little  bearing  upon 
human  affairs. 

If  you  ask  the  common  man  why  he  advocates  the 
restraint  of  a  murderous  person,  he  will  tell  you  that 
he  does  so  because  the  unrestrained  taking  of  human 
life  is  a  personal  concern  with  himself.  He  values 
his  life  above  all  things  else.  It  matters  very  little 
to  him  whether  the  menace  to  that  life  inheres  in  a 
human  form  or  not.  Every  individual  in  a  commu- 
nity in  which  a  wild  tiger  is  known  to  be  at  large  is 
highly  interested  in  the  capture  or  the  death  of  the 
animal.  Why  ?  Why,  if  not  because  the  freedom 
of  the  beast  is  a  danger  which  threatens  the  life  of 
every  member  of  the  group  ?  And  the  same  solici- 
tude would  be  manifest  if,  instead  of  an  untamed 
animal,  the  danger  took  on  the  form  of  a  homicidal 
maniac.  No  less  solicitous  is  the  individual  man 
when  his  life  is  endangered  by  the  conduct  of  a  fel- 
low-man who  is  not  insane,  but  simply  vicious. 

It  is  a  character  of  man,  as  well  as  of  sentient  crea- 
tures in  general,  to  shrink  from  pain.  If  we  ask  why, 
we  can  only  answer  that  such  is  the  fundamental 
law  of  life.  The  sensation  called  pain  is  antago- 
nistic to  the  very  process  of  life  itself.  And  as  one  of 
the  necessary  conditions  of  life  is  freedom  from  pain, 
—  freedom  at  least  within  certain  definite  limits,  — 
the  living  organism  recedes,  by  this  natural  impulse, 


52  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

from  circumstances  which  hinder  its  growth  and 
which  limit  its  freedom.  Pain,  therefore,  which  has 
been  found  to  restrict  the  functions  of  life,  is  as 
antagonistic  to  the  living  organism  as  freedom  from 
pain,  which  enlarges  life,  is  the  reverse.  Animals, 
high  in  the  order  of  creation,  will  fight  for  life  until 
they  are  torn  asunder.  And  at  the  bottom  of  all 
ideas  of  morality  lies  this  function  of  life  which  is  so 
dear  to  all  living  creatures,  human  or  otherwise. 
Thus  it  is  that  man's  mind  has  arisen  to  that  supreme 
conception  of  wrong  found  in  the  universal  abhorrence 
of  wanton  murder. 

No  need  to  look  for  metaphysical  or  hidden  origins 
of  that  idea  of  wrong  pertaining  to  the  taking  of 
human  life  without  justification.  And  the  only  justi- 
fication conceivable  is  that  which  is  found  in  the 
desire  of  men  to  save  and  protect  their  own  lives 
from  the  malicious  activities  of  others.  As  a  general 
rule,  all  moral  considerations  are  swept  away  when 
the  question  becomes  one  of  life  or  death  between 
men,  — when  the  supreme  need  of  the  moment  is  the 
preservation  of  self,  shorn  of  all  the  artificialities 
with  which  custom  and  wealth  have  clothed  it.  So 
forcible  is  this  general  truth  that  we  marvel  at  any 
apparent  exception  to  the  rule.  The  individual  who, 
for  the  moment,  sets  aside  his  inborn  love  of  life, 
and  gives  up  that  life  to  save  others,  excites  the 
extraordinary  and  universal  admiration  of  mankind. 
But  these  instances  are  very  rare  indeed.  To  risk 
one's  life  in  the  salvation  of  one's  fellows  is  deemed 
the  noblest  act  conceivable.  But  deliberately  to  go 
to  one's  death  for  the  sole  purpose  that  others  may 
live  is  not  a  common  or  an  easily  conceivable  practice. 


II  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  53 

We  are  lost  in  admiration  at  that  individual  who 
prefers  death  to  dishonor.  But  death  such  as  this 
is  only  the  consummation  of  a  desire  for  larger  and 
ampler  life  denied  to  the  individual  by  circumstances. 
For  him  the  pain  of  dying  is  not  so  poignant  as  the 
pain  he  would  feel  if,  in  living,  he  could  not  enjoy 
the  free  and  ample  life  he  loves.  And  he  who  lays 
down  his  life  that  others  may  survive  is  moved  by  a 
similar  motive.  It  is  not  that  he  is  in  love  with 
death,  but  rather  that  his  own  life  is  insupportable 
in  the  pressing  presence  of  a  supreme  want  which 
death  alone  can  satisfy. 

These  simple  facts  of  consciousness  are  described 
under  the  somewhat  euphemistic  and  profound 
phrase  "the  utilitarian  origin  of  moral  ideas."  That 
phrase  is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  men's  con- 
duct is  determined  by  their  desires  for  happiness ; 
and  that  their  conceptions  of  right  and  wrong  arise 
from  experiences  which  have  been  found  to  be  pleas- 
urable, on  the  one  hand,  and  painful  on  the  other. 
This  view  of  moral  conduct  is  the  only  method  we 
can  adopt  if  we  would  account  for  the  ordinary 
actions  of  men  by  explanations  appealing  to  common 
sense.  To  encompass  an  act  which,  in  its  absolute 
motive  and  effect,  can  bring  pain,  and  pain  only,  to 
the  doer  of  it,  is  a  proceeding  the  very  thought  of 
which  is  repugnant  to  the  minds  of  healthy  human 
beings. 

Thus  the  fundamental  conception  of  right  is  traced 
always  to  the  motive  impelling  men  to  conduct  by 
which  the  process  of  life  itself  —  physical  or  mental 
—  is  made  safe  and  free.  This  is  the  motive  lying 
at  the  source  of  the  actions  of  individual  human 


54  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

beings,  and  lying  also  at  the  source  of  those  larger 
actions  encompassed  by  numbers  of  individuals  act- 
ing together,  —  actions  which  make  up  the  pith  and 
the  process  of  universal  history.  To  exist  amply,  to 
live  freely,  to  pursue  unhindered  those  ends  which, 
when  found,  bring  to  the  finder  the  happiness  and 
the  comfort  he  most  desires  —  this  is  the  purpose  of 
individual  men,  and  the  purpose  of  nations-,  so  far  as 
any  effort  of  the  human  mind  can  know  or  discern. 

More  clearly  to  show  the  intimate  connection  be- 
tween the  growth  of  moral  ideas  and  the  basic  func- 
tions of  nutrition  and  propagation,  we  shall  have  to 
reconsider  happiness,  as  the  purpose  of  men's  activi- 
ties, in  another  light.  The  normal  man  desires  as 
much  freedom  as  possible  in  supplying  the  wants  of 
his  body,  and  in  mating  with  a  woman  who  shall  rear 
him  a  family.  The  science  of  economics  is  based  on 
the  energies  of  men  exerted  for  the  purpose  of  satis- 
fying these  two  desires.  All  the  labor  of  society  is 
performed  in  order  that  men  may  fill  these  two  func- 
tions. 

The  first  desire  of  every  normal  man  is  the  posses- 
sion of  that  health  which  will  enable  him  to  digest 
and  assimilate  food  which  shall  be  agreeable  to  his 
palate,  secured  with  efforts  as  free  from  pain  as 
possible,  and  consumed  in  surroundings  which  are, 
on  the  whole,  pleasing  to  his  senses  of  sight  and 
smell.  This  satisfied,  his  next  desire  is  to  share  his 
possessions  with  the  woman  of  his  selection,  and  to 
surround  their  mutual  lives  with  a  home.  The  de- 
gree into  which  material  comforts  and  objects  of 
intellectual  and  emotional  use  enter  into  this  retreat 
have  but  a  secondary  bearing  in  the  lives  of  the  man 


II  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  55 

and  his  mate.  The  home  of  the  successful  man, 
together  with  his  collateral  pursuits  of  pleasure, 
touches  almost  all  industries  and  suggests  all  others. 
Thus  we  find  that  all  the  elements  with  which  the 
science  of  economics  deals  spring,  directly  or  indi- 
rectly, from  the  efforts  of  men  to  secure  to  them- 
selves those  means  which  facilitate  the  gratifications 
of  desires  by  which  the  race  is  maintained.  We 
have  already  seen  that  the  pursuit  of  these  means 
constitutes  the  principal  activities  of  society  regarded 
individually  and  collectively. 

In  view  of  these  facts,  it  is  easy  to  understand 
why  human  life  is  the  most  "  sacred "  thing  in  the 
estimation  of  most  men.  In  the  shifting  of  the 
standards  of  right  and  wrong,  the  sanctity  of  human 
life  has  constantly  increased,  while  the  sanctity  of 
human  beliefs  has  undergone  a  reverse  change.  The 
destruction  of  life  is  regarded  with  more  and  more 
abhorrence  ;  but  disregard  of  human  beliefs,  which 
was  once  as  great  a  crime  as  murder,  is  no  longer 
seriously  considered.  Formerly  the  most  sacred 
things  in  the  estimation  of  men  were  deity  and  the 
instruments  used  in  the  worship  of  deity.  Compared 
with  these,  human  life  was  a  trivial  matter.  It  is 
aside  from  our  purpose  to  inquire  into  the  origin  of 
that  belief.  It  is  enough  for  us  here  to  know  that 
such  belief  once  prevailed,  and  now  prevails  no 
longer. 

In  the  opinions  of  men  now,  the  most  unapproach- 
ably sacred  thing  they  know  is  the  life  of  a  man. 
Men  may  with  impunity  question  the  wisdom  of  deity, 
deny  its  very  existence,  or  speak  with  contempt  of 
the  God  of  any  nation  or  individual.  But  he  who 


56  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

would  attempt  to  advocate  the  right  of  private  mur- 
der would  be  restrained  as  a  dangerous  lunatic. 
Even  the  utmost  profanation  of  a  sanctuary  in  which 
deity  is  worshipped  is  reprobated  with  no  more  con- 
dign punishment  than  that  which  is  meted  out  to 
those  guilty  of  minor  offences. 

Next  in  order  to  the  sanctity  of  life  comes  the 
sanctity  of  those  means  whereby  life  and  its  propaga- 
tion are  facilitated  —  property.  To  defend  himself 
in  the  possession  of  those  instruments  man  is  per- 
mitted to  slay  his  fellow.  It  is  not  that  property  is 
in  itself  a  sacred  thing,  but  it  is  sacred  because  it  is 
the  means  whereby  man  is  enabled  to  live  and  to  pro- 
create his  kind ;  and  any  attack  upon  it  is  an  indirect 
attack  upon  the  freedom  of  its  possessor.  This 
intimate  relation  between  life  and  property  is  the 
origin  of  property  rights.  There  can  be  no  other. 
The  nature  of  the  title  to  property  may  or  may  not  be 
a  subject  of  debate;  but  the  origin  of  property  itself 
is  clear.  It  is  understood,  of  course,  that  the  word 
property  is  here  used  in  its  economic  meaning,  as  the 
right  to  the  exclusive  use  of  things  by  an  individual, 
and  not  in  its  common  acceptation,  as  meaning  the 
things  themselves.  Thus  we  find  it  possible  that 
men  may  dispute  about  the  quantity  of  wealth  of 
which  individuals  shall  be  given  the  exclusive  use. 
But  no  man  has  ever  dreamed  of  limiting  the  right 
itself.  The  sanctity  of  that  right  increases  regularly 
with  the  increase  of  men's  sympathies ;  that  right  is 
the  most  zealously  guarded  and  the  most  vigorously 
defended  of  all  rights  save  the  right  of  life  itself  ;  for 
the  enforcement  of  that  right  nations  have  created 
the  most  complicated  systems  of  legal  and  political 


II  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  57 

machinery ;  and  the  entire  mechanism  of  the  world's 
trade,  industry,  and  commerce,  depends  upon  that 
right,  and  upon  that  right  alone 

The  first  importance  of  life  and  property  is,  there- 
fore, seen  to  be  a  theoretical  truth.  And  it  would  be 
a  strange  anomaly  did  not  human  concepts  of  ethics 
naturally  arise  from  the  ideas  of  the  two  processes  of 
life  connoted  by  it.  Of  the  laws  enacted  by  legisla- 
tures, all  but  an  insignificant  number  have  directly 
to  do  with  matters  of  property  and  of  life ;  whereas 
those  which  have  not  such  direct  relation  are  deriva- 
tive from  that  relation,  and  necessarily  so.  Liberty 
means,  in  the  minds  of  most  men,  that  freedom  of 
action  which  shall  enable  them  to  secure  for  them- 
selves the  gratification  of  the  two  basic  desires,  sup- 
plemented by  secondary  gratifications  which  shall 
enhance  the  primary  ones.  No  question  is  an  ethical 
one  which  does  not  touch  nearly  or  remotely  upon 
the  liberty  of  the  individual  in  the  pursuit  of  his 
physical  satisfactions.  Analysis,  however  close,  will 
ever  lead  us  to  this  inevitable  conclusion. 

The  separation  of  religious  ideas  from  moral  ideas 
comes  about  naturally  when  religious  motives  are 
seen  to  have  little  effect  upon  the  industrial  work  of 
the  world.  The  importance  of  deity  as  an  element 
in  the  economic  life  of  man  has  been  so  far  sur- 
mounted that  it  may  be  said  to  be  now  evanescent. 
In  pagan,  and  in  earlier  and  later  Christian  times, 
commerce  and  industry  had  their  special  religious 
patrons.  Prayer  to  some  divinity,  or  to  some  tutelary 
saint,  was  the  necessary  condition  of  success  in  every 
incipient  enterprise.  In  pagan  and  Christian  times 
each  trade  or  guild  had  its  own  patron  god  or  saint ; 


58  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

many  ancient  crafts  to-day  preserve  the  tradition  in 
their  names.  But  few  now  believe  that  industrial  or 
commercial  enterprises  are  dependent  for  success 
upon  anything  but  the  physical  necessities  of  men  for 
the  services  rendered  or  offered.  Purely  ethical  con- 
ceptions are,  therefore,  made  up  of  relations  as 
between  men  and  their  fellow-men,  and  take  only 
secondary  recognition  of  relations  which  may  exist 
between  men  and  deity. 

We  may  state  the  proposition  in  another  and  more 
general  way  by  saying  that  the  ethical  importance  of 
any  act  varies  with  its  distance  from  the  two  primary 
processes  which  sustain  and  propagate  life.  An  act 
is  right  or  wrong  in  the  degree  in  which  it  facilitates 
or  interferes  with  the  physiological  liberty  of  the 
majority  of  men.  Thus  the  summitm  malum  is  the 
destruction  of  human  life,  and  the  summum  bomtm 
the  possession  of  perfect  freedom  for  the  normal  sat- 
isfactions found  in  those  processes  by  which  life, 
individual  and  social,  is  sustained.  Those  things  are 
deemed  good  by  which  these  purposes  are  served ; 
and  those  bad  which  hinder  them.  The  more  closely 
an  act  trenches  on  this  freedom  the  more  important 
it  becomes,  for  good  or  evil,  in  the  minds  of  all  but 
the  insignificantly  few.  What  men  will  do  for  their 
lives,  their  homes,  and  their  children,  every  battle  in 
the  history  of  the  world  will  tell ;  and  liberty  is  no 
more  clearly  defined  than  when  it  is  defined  by  the 
three  words  just  used.  In  the  new  light  of  the 
economic  interpretation  of  history  will  be  found 
many  causes  of  war  which  were  before  obscure. 
Some  scholars  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  all  wars 
have  had  economic  causes;  but  without  insistence 


n  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  59 

upon  this  extreme  view,  its  principle  would  seem  to 
be  justified  by  many  of  the  considerations  which  have 
arisen  with  the  new  method  of  treating  history. 

If  by  the  term  "economy"  we  understand  those 
processes  used  by  men  in  the  support  of  the  lives  of 
individuals  and  the  maintenance  of  the  life  of  the 
race,  we  shall  find  that  common  conceptions  of  right 
and  wrong  are  based  upon  the  economic  relations  of 
men  to  their  fellows.  A  good  citizen  is  one  who  so 
conducts  himself  as  to  earn  the  esteem  of  his  fellow- 
citizens.  To  do  this  he  pays  his  debts  to  the  last 
penny,  he  does  not  overreach  those  of  whom  he  buys 
or  to  whom  he  sells,  he  does  not  misrepresent  the 
quantity  of  wealth  that  is  his  in  a  manner  which 
brings  suffering  upon  others,  he  pays  his  taxes  to  the 
full  extent  required  by  the  law,  and  he  lives  up  to  the 
letter  and  the  spirit  of  the  contracts  which  he  under- 
takes. Over  and  above  all  this,  he  shares  his  hon- 
estly acquired  wealth  with  others  less  fortunate  ;  he 
gives  to  charity  and  to  education,  and  he  encourages 
effort  among  those  he  employs  by  paying  them  a 
wage  somewhat  in  excess  of  that  required  by  the 
merely  mechanical  demands  of  the  labor-market. 
Again  he  is  active  in  reforms  which  purpose  honest 
administration  of  the  laws  by  executives,  and  incor- 
ruptible enactment  of  laws  by  legislators.  And  in 
doing  all  this  he  impliedly  regards  the  lives  and  the 
persons  of  his  fellow-men  with  due  solicitude.  On 
the  contrary,  the  bad  citizen  is  one  who  takes  the 
opposite  course ;  and  he  is  considered  bad  in  just  that 
degree  in  which  his  conduct  varies  from  that  of  the 
good  man. 

But  each  of  the  acts  here  specified  has  an  eco- 


60  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

nomic  value.  The  citizen  may  entertain  the  most  ex- 
traordinary religious  beliefs,  or  he  may  entertain  no 
religious  belief  whatever.  He  may  express  the  most 
profound  doubt  as  to  the  truth  of  current  religious 
convictions,  and  yet  be  appraised  as  a  good  man  ;  and 
if  he  should  contribute  liberally  to  the  support  of 
religious  institutions,  even  while  he  denies  faith  in 
any  or  all  of  the  dogmas  of  religion,  he  is  accounted 
a  thoroughly  good  man  by  his  beneficiaries,  and  is 
even  given  an  extraordinary  moiety  of  praise  because 
of  his  very  lack  of  faith.  He  may  be  noted  as  one 
who  loves  to  exaggerate,  and  even  lie  about  trivial 
matters,  but  this  character  is  regarded  with  levity  so 
long  as  he  is  rigorously  truthful  in  matters  of  weight 
—  that  is,  in  matters  economic.  Thus,  the  moral  im- 
portance attaching  to  religious  life  is,  in  the  judgment 
of  most  men,  of  no  importance. 

Habits  of  intemperance  are  condemned,  not  because 
they  are  wrong  per  se,  but  because  they  are  injurious 
to  the  health  of  the  individual  who  indulges  in  them, 
and,  by  implication,  to  others  who  may  be  led  to  imi- 
tate the  example  set.  Seclude  the  intemperate  man 
from  all  contact  with  his  fellows,  and  place  him  above 
the  possibilities  of  his  habits  influencing  his  posses- 
sions, and  his  conduct  is  still  wrong  because  these 
habits  are  hurtful  to  his  health.  But  this  is  a  narrow 
view.  There  is  a  negative  as  well  as  a  positive  cul- 
pability. For  such  individual  as  this  will  be  con- 
demned, not  alone  for  interfering  with  the  healthy 
processes  of  his  body,  but  for  his  avoidance  of  that 
conduct  which  is  commonly  called  duty  to  his  fellow- 
man,  and  duty,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  case  of  the 
typically  good  man,  is  a  matter  of  economy.  The 


II  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  6 1 

same  logic  applies  to  ethical  ideas  which  have  to  do 
with  the  relations  between  the  sexes.  The  sanctity 
of  marriage  arises  from  purely  economic  causes.  The 
essentiality  of  the  wrong  in  promiscuity  consists  in 
the  interference  such  promiscuity  causes  in  the  normal 
process  of  a  society  whereby  progeny  is  propagated 
and  reared.  Relations  between  the  sexes  have  a 
moral  value  in  all  communities,  savage  and  civilized. 
All  communities  may  not  have  similar  moral  ideas  in 
this  respect.  But  moral  importance  is  everywhere 
associated,  when  men  live  in  a  group,  with  conduct 
concerning  the  relations  of  the  sexes.  The  origin  of 
this  universal  moral  character  in  man  is  therefore 
most  probably  to  be  found  in  the  universal  fact  of 
sex  and  propagation. 

The  growth  of  human  social  groups,  as  demon- 
strated by  anthropology,  begins  with  the  family,  and 
from  these  simple  elements  are  built  up  elaborate 
social  systems  of  tribes  and  races ;  and  from  these 
again  are  developed  nations,  states,  and  governments. 

Thus  while  anthropology  deals  with  the  natural 
history  of  man,  the  causes  which  produce  the  phe- 
nomena of  that  history  are  vital,  and  these  are  to  be 
examined  by  the  science  of  biology. 

The  science  of  psychology  inquires  into  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  minds  of  men,  and  shows  how  these 
phenomena  are  intimately  associated  with  the  vital 
functions,  and  are,  in  fact,  inseparable  from  them. 
Men  desire  to  live  and  to  propagate.  To  do  these 
they  require  certain  necessary  means,  and  their  ener- 
gies are  expended  in  the  manufacture  of  such  means. 
The  things  which  furnish  these  means  are  distributed 
among  the  men  who  create  them.  And  it  is  with  the 


62  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

causes  of  the  peculiar  processes  by  which  this  crea- 
tion and  distribution  are  effected  that  the  science  of 
economics  is  concerned.  As  the  nature  of  the  pro- 
cess by  which  the  creation  and  distribution  takes 
place  is  clearly  determined  by  the  desires  of  the  men 
in  want  of  the  things,  so  it  is  seen  that  the  science  of 
economics  (which  deals  with  that  process)  is  insepara- 
ble from  the  science  of  psychology  (which  deals  with 
the  desires).  And  it  is  clear,  furthermore,  that  these 
two  sciences  are  inseparable  from  the  science  of  biol- 
ogy, which  deals  with  the  nature  and  causes  of  the 
vital  process  out  of  which  the  mental  process  flows. 

If  we  say,  for  example,  that  the  price  of  wheat 
rises  and  falls,  the  business  of  the  economist  is  to 
inquire  how  such  change  takes  place.  His  inquiries 
lead  him  to  the  discovery  that  price  is  the  measure  of 
the  value  of  wheat,  and  that  this  value  is  determined 
by  the  desires  of  men  for  the  possession  of  the  com- 
modity. The  play  of  these  desires  and  their  effect 
upon  the  movements  of  the  commodity,  from  one 
market  to  another,  from  the  time  it  is  grown  and  ma- 
tured to  the  time  it  is  consumed,  is  the  function  of 
economics.  But  the  nature  and  the  causes  of  the 
desires  themselves  are  the  concern  of  the  psycholo- 
gist. The  economist  explains  how  the  play  of  the 
desires  moves  the  wheat  and  determines  its  value. 
But  the  psychologist  explains  why  the  desires  are 
present  in  the  minds  of  men.  In  doing  this  he 
trenches  on  the  field  of  the  biologist,  who  inquires 
into  the  vital  functions  underlying  the  mental  ones. 
If,  now,  we  reverse  the  order  we  have  followed, 
we  find,  simply  enough,  that  the  desire  for  life 
creates  a  desire  for  the  things  which  sustain  life. 


II  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  63 

Among  these  things  is  bread.  Bread  is  made  from 
wheat.  Men,  therefore,  desire  the  possession  of 
wheat,  and  this  desire  moves  them  to  all  those  activi- 
ties observed  in  the  intricate  relations  of  the  many 
industries  by  which  wheat  is  grown,  garnered,  trans- 
ported, and  exchanged. 

But  what  is  true  of  wheat  is  also  true  of  every 
other  thing  produced  by  art.  It  may  be  said  that  an 
instrument  manufactured  for  the  micrometrical  meas- 
urement of  distant  stars  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
vital  processes  of  the  astronomer  who  uses  it,  or  of  the 
student  who  is  taught  the  results  of  his  observations. 
But  in  such  observations  the  astronomer  merely  grati- 
fies a  desire  which  depends  for  its  existence  upon  the 
brain  nourished  by  those  vital  processes  ;  a  desire 
different  only  in  degree  from  that  of  the  savage  man 
who,  with  full  stomach,  becomes  interested  in  the 
structure  of  the  skeleton  of  the  animal  whose  flesh  he 
has  just  devoured.  Analysis  thus  leads  us,  step  by 
step,  from  the  simple  ideas  which  furnish  the  motive 
for  the  creation  of  wealth,  to  those  more  complex 
processes  out  of  which  develop  the  manifold  activities 
of  men,  and  the  entire  mechanism  of  industry. 

From  these  complex  activities  and  intricate  instru- 
ments of  gratification  flow,  more  complex  ideas  of  the 
relations  of  men  to  each  other,  and  the  relations  of 
individual  men  to  the  mass.  As  we  have  seen  that 
moral  conceptions  are  primarily  evolved  from  the  de- 
sires of  men  first  to  live,  and  then  to  propagate,  we 
are  warranted  in  the  conclusion  that  probably  all 
moral  conceptions  are  only  further  evolutions  of  the 
same  primary  material.  This  conclusion  is,  after  all, 
but  a  corollary  of  the  laws  of  the  conservation  of 


64  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

energy  and  the  indestructibility  of  matter.  Given 
the  basic  functions  of  nutrition  and  propagation,  and 
the  modes  of  their  operation  in  the  environments  we 
see  about  us,  and  no  other  result  than  that  which  is 
before  us  is  conceivable.  The  science  of  ethics,  then, 
which  deals  with  the  causes  of  men's  conceptions  of 
right  and  wrong  conduct,  leads  us  directly  to  eco- 
nomic science,  which,  in  its  turn,  is  brought  to  mental 
science  for  a  knowledge  of  more  remote  causes ;  and 
these  are  themselves  explained  by  the  science  of  life. 

As  the  whole  cannot  be  greater  than  the  sum  of 
its  parts,  it  would  follow,  from  what  we  have  said, 
that  the  facts  we  have  been  considering  make  up  the 
sum  total  of  the  material  with  which  social  science 
must  work.  If  we  are  clearly  to  understand  how 
social  movements  take  place,  we  must  first  understand 
zvky  they  take  place.  Social  science,  to  be  useful  at 
all,  must  be  useful  in  this  direction,  and  with  this 
end  in  view.  It  matters  not  how  great  may  be  the 
quantity  or  the  variety  of  the  knowledge  accumulated 
about  man  and  his  institutions ;  no  definite  science 
can  come  from  such  observations  until  the  causes  at 
work  have  been  laid  bare.  If  the  causes  of  social 
action  are  to  be  known,  they  are  to  be  known  only 
by  the  light  thrown  upon  them  by  the  sciences  of 
ethics,  economics,  psychology,  and  biology.  When 
social  science  has  shown  the  connection  between  the 
facts  and  the  causes  developed  by  these  four  depart- 
ments of  knowledge,  it. has  done  all  that  it  is  possible 
for  it  to  do. 

The  elements  of  social  action  are  thus  found  in  the 
motives  which  impel  men  to  conduct  by  which  the 
purpose  of  the  individual  is  best  served,  and  by  which 


II  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  65 

his  life  is  made  free  and  ample.  The  purpose  of  the 
individual  man,  as  the  purpose  of  the  individual  plant 
or  animal,  is  found  in  the  very  processes  whereby  the 
individual  is  enabled  to  live  and  to  propagate.  This 
purpose,  in  creatures  somewhat  lower  than  man  in  the 
scale  of  creation,  is,  we  have  found,  an  intelligent 
purpose.  The  intelligence  with  which  the  purpose  is 
pursued  is  larger  in  man  than  in  other  animals ;  it  is 
larger  in  mature  men  than  it  is  in  immature  ones ; 
and  it  is  larger  in  some  mature  men  than  it  is  in 
others.  This  difference  of  intelligence  with  which 
the  purpose  is  sought  varies,  too,  with  various  groups 
of  men.  One  nation  pursues  it  with  much  intelli- 
gence, another  with  little  ;  but  the  purpose  itself  is 
the  same  in  all.  The  higher  the  degree  of  intelli- 
gence used  in  the  activities  which  tend  toward  the 
accomplishment  of  that  purpose,  the  better  will  that 
purpose  be  served. 

Now  what  is  meant  by  the  term  "  an  enlightened 
race  "  ?  There  need  be  no  dispute  about  this.  An 
enlightened  race  is  one  which  has  created  a  mode 
of  life,  a  system  of  laws,  and  a  mechanism  for  their 
enforcement,  whereby  the  individual  is  not  only  pro- 
tected in  his  life  and  property,  but  is  left  free  to 
indulge  the  gratification  of  desires  arising  after  the 
satisfaction  of  the  two  primary  ones ;  a  race  which 
has,  by  intelligent  action,  reduced,  as  far  as  possible, 
the  pain  attendant  upon  the  obtainment  of  the  means 
of  living ;  which  has  increased  the  quantity  of  these 
means  in  a  degree  enhancing  the  pleasure  of  indi- 
vidual existence,  and  the  rearing  of  offspring ;  a  race 
strong  enough  internally  to  secure  for  its  integers  the 
highest  available  freedom  in  the  gratification  of  their 


66  THE   LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

desires,  and  strong  enough,  externally,  adequately  to 
protect  them  from  interference  in  these  satisfactions 
from  an  enemy  without. 

Such  a  race  may  be  by  no  means  satisfied  with  its 
internal  state.  It  may  be  in  the  process  of  striving 
more  widely  to  enlarge  the  liberty  of  its  individuals. 
It  may  be  seeking  to  create  new  and  easier  methods 
of  obtaining  the  things  it  needs  to  gratify  its  desires. 
It  may  be  engaged  in  efforts  to  add  to  the  quantity 
of  the  intelligence  with  which  it  pursues  its  purpose. 
But  all  of  these  activities  are  directed,  not  toward  the 
alteration  of  the  purpose,  but  toward  reaching  the 
purpose  with  the  least  possible  pain.  So  far  as 
the  sciences  of  life,  of  mind,  of  utility,  and  of  con- 
duct can  tell  us,  this  is  the  only  purpose  of  man  and 
men  upon  earth :  The  full  and  free  exercise  of 
those  functions  of  nutrition  and  propagation  which 
sustain  the  life  of  the  individual  and  maintain  the  life 
of  the  kind. 

But  are  we  to  rest  content  with  this  generalization  ? 
Are  we  to  halt  at  what  seems  to  be  only  the  thresh- 
old of  inquiry  and  refuse  to  concern  ourselves  with 
those  larger  questions  which  have  drawn  to  them- 
selves the  minds  of  men  in  all  ages  with  irresistible 
fascination  ?  Are  we  to  endeavor  to  find  no  higher 
purpose  for  life  itself  than  that  discovered  in  the 
mere  functions  of  living  ?  Are  we  to  be  distrained 
from  the  quest  which  shall  reveal  to  us  the  relations 
of  life  at  large  to  the  universe,  and,  perhaps,  the 
great  purpose  toward  which  all  the  activities  of  man 
not  only,  but  of  universal  being,  are  tending  ? 

These  questions  suggest  a  science  the  province  of 
which  shall  include  that  of  every  other  science,  and 


II  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  67 

the  business  of  which  shall  be  to  understand  the  rela- 
tions of  all  facts  to  one  another,  and  of  each  to  all. 
This  is  Ontology  —  the  Science  of  Being.  Men's 
minds  have  been  busy  with  questions  of  ontology 
from  the  earliest  times  within  historical  reach.  They 
desired  to  know  the  purpose  of  universal  being  before 
they  had  discovered  the  purpose  of  the  most  insignifi- 
cant organism  in  the  whole  field  of  observation.  They 
wished  to  know  the  process  by  which  the  stars  had 
come  into  existence  before  they  had  discovered  what 
the  stars  were  made  of.  They  discussed  the  nature 
of  the  mind  before  they  had  found  out  the  anatomy 
of  the  nerves.  They  were  engaged  in  formulating 
laws  according  to  which  the  earth  was  produced  be- 
fore they  knew  the  size,  shape,  weight,  constituents, 
or  motion  of  the  earth  itself.  They  constructed 
theories  of  creation  with  no  knowledge  of  the  con- 
servation of  energy,  or  of  the  chemical  or  physical 
properties  of  matter. 

It  was  these  very  efforts  which  resulted  in  the  fatu- 
ous absurdities  into  which  some  of  the  old  philoso- 
phers were  led.  Thales  believed  that  water  was  the 
primary  material  out  of  which  all  forms  of  being  had 
emerged,  and  into  which  all  forms  would  return.  A 
knowledge  of  the  bare  fact  that  water  itself  is  a  com- 
bination of  two  different  things  would  have  prevented 
him  from  reaching  such  obviously  wrong  conclusions. 
It  is  not  meant  here  to  disparage  the  speculations  of 
antiquity.  The  ancient  philosophers  were  trying  to 
do  only  what  man  has  been  trying  to  do  ever  since. 
But  the  fruitlessness,  not  to  say  viciousness,  of  their 
efforts  is  seen  in  the  great  mass  of  erroneous  concep- 
tions of  natural  processes  which  their  work  left  as  an 


68  THE   LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

heirloom  to  their  intellectual  posterity.  If  science  is 
to  understand  the  nature  and  the  action  of  being  in 
general,  it  can  arrive  at  that  understanding  only  by 
slowly  enlarging  its  knowledge  of  the  various  parts  of 
the  structure  whose  function  it  wishes  to  comprehend. 
Had  Thales  known  that  water  itself  was  resolvable  into 
oxygen  and  hydrogen,  he  never  could  have  entertained 
the  absurd  thought  that  water  was  the  element  of 
elements. 

Problems  of  ontology  are  as  interesting  to-day  as 
they  were  in  the  time  of  the  ancients.  Men  aspire 
now,  as  they  did  then,  to  know  the  cause  and  the  pur- 
pose of  the  great  panorama  of  nature.  They  aspire 
now,  as  they  did  then,  to  grasp  the  hidden  meaning 
in  the  varied  phenomena  of  life  and  of  mind  and  of 
matter.  They  seek  now,  as  they  did  then,  to  account, 
by  some  rational  explanation,  for  the  existence  of  the 
totality  of  things,  and  for  the  order  of  the  flux  in 
which  all  things  are  observed  to  run.  These  aspira- 
tions, if  anything,  are  deeper  and  higher  now  than 
they  ever  were  before. 

But  while  men  admittedly  know  more  now  than 
did  the  ancients,  they  have  acquired  that  knowledge 
by  a  method  totally  different  from  that  used  by  the 
ancients.  While  the  generalizations  of  modern  ob- 
servers are  not  as  high  as  those  indulged  in  by  the 
unguided  fancy  of  antiquity,  they  at  least  possess 
the  merit  of  being  unassailably  and  demonstrably 
true.  If  men  do  not  now  believe  that  water,  or  air,  is 
the  element  of  elements,  the  primary  material  of  the 
universe,  it  is  only  because  they  can  assert  and  prove 
the  contrary.  If  there  is  no  longer  any  dispute 
about  the  shape  of  the  solar  system,  it  is  because 


ii  BASIC  FORCES  AND   FUNCTIONS  69 

men  left  off  guessing  and  set  themselves  to  the  task 
of  patiently  observing  the  less  apparent  motions  of 
the  heavenly  bodies.  If  there  is  danger  no  longer  of 
men  believing  that  the  earth  was  formed  in  a  few 
hours,  it  is  because  they  have  learned  the  nature  of 
the  materials  out  of  which  the  earth  is  made,  and  the 
properties,  chemical  and  physical,  of  those  materials 
in  different  degrees  of  temperature. 

When  the  minds  of  men  ceased  to  fly  at  generaliza- 
tions which,  in  their  very  nature,  could  not  be  demon- 
strated, and  addressed  themselves  to  the  observation 
of  minute  processes,  generalizations  which  were  easily 
demonstrated  became  possible,  and  not  until  then. 
Ontology,  if  it  is  to  be  of  any  use,  must  rise  to  its 
general  laws  in  precisely  the  same  way  as  that  which 
safeguards  the  progress  of  other  sciences.  Patience 
is  the  prerequisite  of  all  scientific  success.  But  that 
patience,  which  can  wait  indefinitely  without  leaping 
at  conclusions  in  no  wise  the  subject  of  proof,  is  the 
prerogative  of  only  a  few  great  minds.  If  the  uni- 
versal process  of  things  has  before  it  a  purpose  in 
which  are  united  all  minor  purposes ;  if  universal 
activities  tend  toward  the  accomplishment  of  one 
all-inclusive  end,  the  nature  of  that  universal  purpose 
and  of  that  end  can  be  known  only  when  the  sum  of 
all  knowable  activities  is  mastered. 

"  The  Destiny  of  Man  and  the  Universe  "  is  an  ex- 
pression commonly  heard.  Those  who  use  it  seem 
to  have  some  conception  of  the  primary  importance 
of  man,  thereby  implying  that  man's  destiny  differs, 
in  some  unexplained  way,  from  that  of  all  things  else 
in  existence.  Freely  admitting  that  they  can  see  the 
purpose  —  and  the  highest  purpose  —  in  the  life  pro- 


7<D  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

cess  of  plants  and  lower  animals,  they  are  disposed 
to  exempt  the  human  race,  or  at  least  the  "  civilized  " 
part  of  it,  from  those  laws  which  they  are  willing  to 
extend  to  the  rest  of  creation.  But  when  pressed 
for  their  reasons  in  so  doing,  they  are  compelled  to 
carry  the  discussion  quite  out  of  the  range  of  human 
observation.  They  fall  into  the  ancient  habit  of  fly- 
ing at  conclusions  which  are  not  warranted  by  facts. 
They  argue  somewhat  after  the  fashion  of  Thales. 
"  There  must  be  a  primary  material.  It  is  my  con- 
viction that  this  primary  material  is  water.  Prove 
you  that  it  is  not." 

We  do  not  say  that  this  method  of  reasoning  is 
wholly  without  advantage  to  those  who  practise  it. 
It  assumes  something  which  can  neither  be  proved 
nor  disproved.  Thales  could  not  prove  that  his 
postulate  was  true;  but  no  more  could  his  oppo- 
nents prove  that  it  was  not.  The  method  of  Thales 
is  not  altogether  unknown  to  more  modern  contro- 
versialists. But  the  insecurity  of  that  method  (so 
far  as  positive  knowledge  is  concerned)  becomes  evi- 
dent when  we  meet  the  Thalesian  argument  by  an 
adoption  of  the  Thalesian  method.  This  was  done 
by  Anaximenes.  "  The  primal  material,"  said  Anax- 
imenes,  "  is  air.  Prove  you  that  it  is  not ! "  The  proof 
that  both  were  wrong  was  not  secured  by  the  assump- 
tion of  a  third  primal  material,  but  by  a  careful  exam- 
ination of  the  nature  of  water  and  air,  and  by  the 
discovery  that  one  was  a  compound  of  two  different 
gases,  and  the  other  a  mixture  of  several. 

Knowledge  can  never  be  furthered  by  the  assump- 
tion of  that  which,  in  its  nature,  does  not  admit  of 
positive  proof  or  of  positive  disproof.  The  theories 


it  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  71 

of  Thales  and  of  Anaximenes  had  been  most  useful 
if  they  had  induced  men  to  investigate  the  nature  of 
water  or  of  air.  Theory  must  be  ever  in  advance  of 
knowledge.  It  is  useful  only  while  it  serves  to  stimu- 
late new  observations.  In  the  growth  and  develop- 
ment of  human  knowledge  false  theories  are  not  only 
useful,  but  necessary.  Theory  ever  must  be  adjusted 
to  the  new  facts  accruing  from  its  adoption.  And 
when  fact  and  theory  are  in  equilibrium,  speculation 
ceases,  and  knowledge  takes  its  place. 

These  considerations  make  it  clear  that  any  theory 
of  an  universal  purpose  of  things  must  be  based  upon 
observation  of  particular  purposes  and  their  relations 
to  one  another.  Ontology  is  a  science  which  may  be 
said  to  be  yet  unborn.  A  bare  metaphysic  will  hardly 
satisfy  the  demands  of  the  cautious  mind.  But  some 
bold  intellects  have  dared  to  suggest  the  general 
principles  upon  which  a  science  of  ontology  may  be 
rationally  reared.  Seeing  that  energy  and  matter 
are  everywhere  existent,  they  assume  that  the  quan- 
tity of  both  is  constant.  They  point  out  the  modes 
of  their  operation  in  particular  processes,  and  infer 
that  the  process  through  which  the  aggregate  passes 
is  analogous  to  the  process  through  which  passes  each 
of  its  parts.  This  view  of  things  has  been  called 
Evolution.  It  is  a  theory  which  has  profoundly 
affected  the  educational  methods  and  the  religious 
thought  of  the  age.  It  is  a  suggestion  as  important 
now  as  was  the  suggestion  of  a  prima  materia  in  the 
time  of  Thales.  But  it  differs  from  Thales'  theory 
in  that  it  supports  its  claims  with  a  superabundance 
of  facts,  drawn  from  the  realms  of  every  science,  and 
unified  in  a  consistent  whole.  Yet  it  must  be  said 


72  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

that,  however  strong  may  be  the  presumption  in  its 
favor,  it  has  not  been  proved. 

The  premises  of  the  theory  of  universal  evolution 
are  admittedly  true.  It  is  true  that  all  forms  of  life 
have  been  evolved  from  simpler  forms  and  from  a 
few  ancestors.  It  is  true  that  language  is  the  prod- 
uct of  slow  growth  upon  lines  analogous  to  those  of 
vital  growth  ;  that  nations  and  the  institutions  of  men 
are  evolved  out  of  the  conflict  of  forces  which  we  see 
before  our  very  eyes  in  the  present  day,  and  that  knowl- 
edge itself  progresses  much  in  the  same  way.  We 
have  evidence  to  show  that  the  earth  was  wrought 
out  of  material  which  preexisted  in  a  very  different 
form  from  that  which  we  now  see.  And  it  seems  no 
less  evident  that  the  solar  system  was  slowly  reduced 
to  its  present  shape  and  motions  by  physical  and 
chemical  changes  of  an  evolutionary  character.  There 
are  excellent  reasons,  too,  for  the  belief  that  star 
clusters  have  been  differentiated  from  nebulae.  Spec- 
troscopy  has  established  the  fact  that  the  constituents 
of  remote  stars  are  identical  with  those  of  the  sun, 
and  that  the  earth  is  composed  of  substances  all  of 
which  are  to  be  found  elsewhere  in  space  without  re- 
spect to  distance.  Gravitation  shows  us  that  the  most 
intimate  connection  exists  between  bodies  separated 
by  inconceivably  vast  gulfs  of  space.  The  light  of  a 
star  billions  of  miles  away  readily  effects  remarkable 
chemical  changes  upon  a  photographic  plate. 

These  facts  go  to  prove  the  unity  of  nature,  and 
warrant  the  presumption  that  the  minor  processes  of 
evolution,  open  to  our  observation  in  things  immedi- 
ately around  us,  are  but  parts  of  some  universal  pro- 
cess which  is  probably  of  a  similar  kind.  And  every 


ii  BASIC  FORCES  AND   FUNCTIONS  73 

fresh  discovery  adds  to  the  probability  that  this  pre- 
sumption is  true. 

Yet,  however  logical  may  be  the  conclusion  that 
evolution  on  the  universal  scale  is  similar  to  that 
which  we  see  in  smaller  aggregates,  we  are  not  war- 
ranted in  fixing  the  limits  of  universal  purpose.  Pro- 
fessor Pearson  has  wisely  said  that  the  scope  of  science 
must  constantly  enlarge ;  but  he  no  less  wisely  adds 
that  the  goal  of  science,  that  is,  the  complete  inter- 
pretation of  the  universe,  is  an  ideal  goal,  marking 
the  direction  in  which  science  moves,  but  at  the  same 
time  a  goal  which  never  can  be  reached.  With  this 
remote  purpose,  it  is  true,  social  science  may  concern 
itself,  but  only  in  so  far  as  that  purpose  is  inclusive 
of  the  purpose  of  man.  The  science  of  society,  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  ontologist,  is  hardly  more  im- 
portant than  astronomy  or  geology  or  physics  or 
chemistry.  For  while  social  science  finds  useful  the 
discoveries  of  every  other  department  of  inquiry,  still 
it  is  improperly  called  the  "  science  of  sciences." 
Indeed,  if  it  be  true  that  the  universe  is  passing 
through  a  process  of  which  all  other  orderly  changes 
are  but  parts ;  if  it  be  true  that  nature,  throughout 
the  entire  range  of  existence,  is  one  united  whole ;  if 
it  be  true  that  the  movements  of  star  systems  and  the 
minute  changes  in  micro-organisms  are  bound  together 
by  some  law  of  force  which  acts  upon  the  one  at  the 
same  time  and  with  the  same  purpose  that  it  acts 
upon  the  other,  then  the  inference  is  clear  that  divi- 
sions of  science  are  like  divisions  of  time  or  periods 
of  history  —  purely  arbitrary  matters.  And,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  this  very  view  is  becoming  more  acceptable 
to  careful  men  every  day. 


74  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

We  have  seen  that  between  the  vital  changes 
going  on  in  the  individual  and  the  changes  observed 
to  be  going  on  in  society  there  is  a  close  and  causal 
association.  If  the  very  thoughts  of  men  are  really 
rooted  in  the  functions  of  their  bodies,  may  we  not 
go  farther  and  say  that  life  itself  is  derived,  in  its 
origin,  from  what  is  generally  characterized  as  "  dead 
matter"?  The  theory  of  "spontaneous  generation," 
or  the  abiogenetic  theory,  is  held  to  be  true  by  many 
naturalists.  These  urge  the  necessity  of  the  belief 
that  life  has  sprung  from  matter  ordinarily  described 
as  inanimate.  This  theory  has  not  been  experimen- 
tally proved  to  be  true.  In  fact,  experiment  and 
observation  apparently  go  to  prove  the  contrary. 
There  is  no  evidence,  experimental  or  otherwise, 
which  shows  that  life  has  ever  arisen  except  from 
some  preexisting  form  of  life.  But  this  theory  is 
a  conclusion  flowing  from  the  laws  of  the  conser- 
vation of  energy  and  the  indestructibility  of  matter. 
Only  two  hypotheses  can  account  for  the  existence 
of  living  things.  Either  some  power  extraneous  to 
matter  has,  by  a  special  effort,  endowed  certain 
quantities  of  matter  with  the  property  of  life ;  or 
matter  has  always  possessed  the  potency  by  which 
energy  is  changed  into  the  special  form  seen  in 
living  things. 

The  advantages  in  favor  of  the  latter  theory  are 
found  in  its  extreme  simplicity.  We  have  no  reason 
to  believe  that  the  sum  of  the  energy,  or  force,  in  the 
universe  is  ever  lessened  or  increased.  We  know 
that  living  organisms  simply  convert  one  form  of 
energy  into  another  form ;  that  organic  matter  does 
not  differ  in  its  elements,  but  only  in  its  combinations, 


II  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  75 

from  inorganic  matter ;  and  that  the  processes  used 
in  effecting  the  metamorphosis  from  inorganic  to 
organic  forms  are  purely  mechanical.  Thus  far  the 
need  of  an  extraneous  power  is  nowhere  evidenced. 
It  is  only  when  we  come  to  the  origin  of  life  itself ; 
the  act  of  metamorphosis  by  which  a  living  machine 
is  formed  where  there  was  none  before,  that  it  has 
been  deemed  necessary  to  introduce  an  extra-cosmic 
force  into  the  problem. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  contended  that  it  is  impos- 
sible for  life  to  emerge  out  of  matter  called  inorganic 
without  the  intervention  of  some  power  other  than 
that  found  in  matter  itself.  Nowhere,  it  is  argued  by 
those  who  support  this  theory,  do  we  find  that  living 
matter  is  derived  from  dead  matter.  Experiment  has 
not  been  able  to  produce  life,  and  no  one  has  as  yet 
found  nature  at  work  in  the  act  of  transformation. 
Therefore,  life  is  an  act  of  creation  by  a  power  above 
nature  and  independent  of  natural  law. 

The  number  of  the  acts  of  special  creation  which 
were  once  held  to  be  necessary  has  been  reduced 
very  materially  by  the  researches  of  very  modern 
times.  It  was  formerly  believed  that  the  sun,  the 
stars,  and  the  solar  system  were  created  in  the  state 
we  see  them  at  present.  This  is  now  known  to  be 
untrue.  It  was  formerly  believed  that  species  were 
originally  created  as  we  find  them  now.  This  like- 
wise has  been  proved  to  be  erroneous.  But  if  old 
opinions  have  receded,  step  by  step,  before  the 
encroachments  of  positive  knowledge,  they  have 
surrendered  only  after  struggles  more  or  less  intense. 
Men  have  admitted  that  they  were  wrong  in  the  belief 
that  man  was  made  by  a  special  effort  of  an  extra- 


76  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

cosmic  power,  and  concede  that  he  was  slowly 
developed  from  preexisting  forms  of  life.  But  that 
life  is  itself  the  product  of  merely  natural  forces  they 
still  refuse  to  believe. 

And  yet  we  are  forced  into  the  admission  that  one 
of  these  two  theories  must  be  true.  In  the  absence 
of  positive  knowledge  we  are  warranted  in  the  adop- 
tion of  a  theory  the  principles  of  which  are  most  in 
harmony  with  observed  facts.  It  is  as  difficult  to 
prove  now  that  life  was  not  produced  ab  initio  by  the 
effort  of  an  extra-cosmic  power,  as  it  was  to  prove 
that  Thales'  postulate  of  a  primal  material  was  not 
the  true  one.  The  mere  absence  of  evidence  to  the 
contrary  in  no  wise  supports  a  positive  assumption. 
But  the  absence  of  evidence  to  the  contrary  often 
does  support  a  negative  assumption,  so  much  so, 
indeed,  that  this  principle  is  the  one  upon  which  is 
based  the  entire  theory  of  criminal  law.  In  the  ab- 
sence of  any  positive  evidence  whatever  that  a  man 
is  guilty  of  a  crime,  he  is  held  to  be  innocent. 
He  is  not  required  to  prove  that  he  is  innocent. 
Those  who  assert  that  he  is  guilty  must  substantiate 
their  charge  by  facts  which  fix  the  guilt.  But  if  there 
is  strong  presumption  of  guilt,  then  the  absence  of 
negative  evidence  becomes  highly  valuable.  This 
principle  is  commonly  used  by  physicians  in  what 
they  call  "  diagnosis  by  exclusion."  Certain  symptoms 
indicate  the  presence  of  a  number  of  diseases.  By 
eliminating  one  disease  after  another,  because  of  the 
lack  of  some  typical  symptom,  the  diagnostician 
narrows  down  the  number  of  causes  until  he  arrives 
at  one  disease  which  is  recognized  as  the  cause  of 
them  all.  If,  of  a  number  of  possible  causes,  all  but 


II  BASIC   FORCES   AND    FUNCTIONS  77 

one  can  be  stricken  out,  the  conclusion  that  the 
remaining  cause  is  the  true  one  rises  to  certainty. 

In  a  case  of  this  kind  negative  evidence  is  used  for 
the  proof  of  a  positive  assertion.  And  it  is  this 
method  of  "  diagnosis  by  exclusion  "  that  is  used  by 
those  who  support  the  theory  of  spontaneous  genera- 
tion. There  is  no  positive  evidence,  in  any  quantity, 
of  the  intervention  of  an  extra-cosmic  power  in  any  of 
the  particular  processes  of  nature.  Interpositions 
of  providence  are  no  longer  claimed  by  anybody  in 
the  action  of  the  tides,  or  in  the  vital  changes  going 
on  in  vegetable  or  animal  life.  The  presumption  is 
that  if  it  be  absent  from  all  of  the  processes  we  do 
know,  it  is  absent  from  any  particular  process  with 
which  we  are  not  acquainted. 

The  diagnostician  who  would  assume  that  failure 
of  his  patient's  eyes  was  due  to  extra-cosmic  interven- 
tion, simply  because  he  could  not  discover  for  it  a 
natural  cause,  would  be  deemed  an  inefficient  practi- 
tioner. His  patient  would  seek  for  an  oculist  who 
had  a  reputation  for  finding  natural  causes,  and  who 
had  no  faith  at  all  in  divine  intervention,  at  least  in 
the  matter  of  eye  disease.  Why  ?  Because  many 
diseases  of  the  eye  have  been  found  to  be  caused  by 
some  simple  obstruction  in  the  function  or  the  struc- 
ture of  the  organ,  or  by  some  defect  in  general 
alimentation.  And  the  pathologist  assumes  that  all 
diseases  of  the  eye  are  due  to  similar  causes.  If 
pathologists  had  allowed  the  consideration  of  divine 
interposition  to  have  any  weight  at  all  in  their  inves- 
tigations, their  science  had  been  useless  and,  in  fact, 
impossible. 

But  it  is  this  very  exclusion  of  extra-cosmic  causes 


78  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

which  alone  has  made  possible  the  progress  of 
sciences  other  than  that  of  pathology.  A  disease 
may  make  its  appearance  which  can  be  accounted  for 
by  no  process  known  to  pathology.  But  for  that 
reason  do  pathologists  assume  that  it  is  due  to  a 
special  act  of  providence  ?  No.  They  assume  the 
very  reverse.  If,  now,  careful  and  long-continued 
research  fail  to  account  for  the  presence  of  the  dis- 
ease by  any  known  facts  of  abnormal  function  or 
structure,  do  pathologists  then  fall  back  on  divine 
interposition  ?  Again,  no.  In  spite  of  the  absence 
of  all  evidence  to  the  contrary,  they  still  assume  that 
the  disease  is  naturally  caused.  The  conclusion  that 
it  is  not  caused  by  an  extra-cosmic  power  is  as  certain, 
in  their  minds,  as  if  the  negative  evidence  were  as 
strong  in  this  particular  instance  as  it  is  in  others. 

But  this  is  precisely  the  position  taken  by  those 
who  support  the  theory  that  the  origin  of  life  is  a 
natural  process.  They  point  to  the  accumulated 
evidence  of  ages  as  showing  no  indication  of  an  extra- 
cosmic  force  in  any  natural  phenomenon  either  of 
life  or  of  mind  or  of  matter.  They  assume,  then,  that 
since  life  is  a  natural  process  in  all  of  its  manifesta- 
tions, its  origin  is  to  be  found  in  a  natural  source. 
That  origin  could  have  come  about  in  but  one  way  — 
the  slow  or  rapid  development  of  living  forms  from 
forms  of  another  kind.  If  the  earth,  as  we  have 
reason  for  knowing,  was  at  one  time  heated  to  a 
degree  at  which  life  is  impossible,  the  germination  of 
life  must  have  taken  place  with  the  chemical  and 
physical  changes  which  accompanied  the  subsequent 
cooling  of  the  planet. 

Yet  when  even  this  theory  is  accepted  by   those 


II  BASIC   FORCES  AND   FUNCTIONS  79 

who  still  cling  to  the  extra-cosmic  power  as  a  first 
cause,  these  latter  will  say :  "  We  may  safely  admit 
your  conclusion  in  a  general  way  ;  but  this  admission 
will  by  no  means  invalidate  the  claim  that  all  these 
phenomena  you  call  natural  are  still  sustained  by  an 
unaltering  and  continuous  act  of  interposition  ;  that 
every  natural  process  is  sustained  in  its  orderly  prog- 
ress by  a  sustained  effort  on  the  part  of  the  extrane- 
ous power." 

This,  it  would  seem,  is  a  strange  begging  of  the 
question.  It  is  an  assumption  of  the  very  premise 
that  is  denied.  It  is  essentially  the  same  as  to  say, 
"  There  is  no  evidence  of  extraneous  interposition  in 
any  particular  act  of  nature  we  know.  Therefore, 
extraneous  interposition  is  everywhere  in  operation." 
Or,  "  No  human  being  has  ever  been  found  with  a 
proboscis  like  that  of  an  elephant.  Therefore,  we 
assume  that  all  human  beings  have  probosces  like 
those  of  the  elephants." 

There  is  yet  a  third  party  of  interventionists  who 
will  admit  the  strength  of  the  exclusion  theory  in  all 
respects  except  the  origin  of  existence  itself.  These 
assume  that  the  universe  was  created  out  of  nothing 
by  a  power  which  existed  before  and  independent  of 
it ;  that  upon  the  matter  and  energy  thus  produced 
was  impressed  the  necessity  of  action  in  that  order, 
or  with  that  sequence,  which  we  call  natural  law  ;  and 
that  with  the  cessation  of  the  special  act  by  which 
this  production  was  consummated,  the  universe  was 
left  to  obey  the  tendencies  made  inherent  in  it  from 
the  beginning. 

This  assumption  differs  from  the  other  assumptions 
considered  in  that  it  is  impossible  to  show  its  improb- 


80  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

ability  by  comparison.  There  is  only  one  universe. 
And,  inasmuch  as  nobody  can  prove  the  probability 
of  an  extra-cosmic  influence  upon  the  greatest  or 
most  insignificant  phenomenon  therein,  it  is  evident 
that  nobody  can  prove  the  absolute  creation  of  the 
whole  by  facts  which  themselves  negative  that  very 
conclusion. 

It  should  be  clear,  then,  that  the  work  which  the 
science  of  ontology  will  have  to  do  shall  deal  with  phe- 
nomena classified  by  sciences  which  have  found  and 
described  the  causes  of  natural  action.  If  any  great 
purpose,  of  which  the  purpose  of  human  society  is 
but  an  insignificant  part,  be  found,  it  will  be  found  to 
be  the  motive  of  universal  action.  Such  universal 
purpose  is  held  by  Herbert  Spencer  to  be  no  more  or 
less  than  the  operation  on  an  universal  scale  of  the 
processes  we  see  going  forward  in  the  smallest  aggre- 
gates —  evolution  and  dissolution.  Or,  to  state  the 
proposition  in  other  words,  the  purpose  of  the  universe 
is  the  very  process  through  which  the  universe  is  ob- 
served to  pass. 

It  is  this  —  shall  we  say  purposeless  —  conception 
of  things  which  has  led  many  earnest  persons  to  a 
rejection  of  that  profound  synthetic  philosophy  which 
attempts  to  dispose  of  every  question  which  can  pos- 
sibly be  entertained  by  the  human  intellect.  The 
conception  is  not  new.  It  is  the  principle  upon 
which  the  cosmogony  of  the  Brahmins  was  founded. 
It  was  taught  by  some  of  the  Greeks,  and  it  was 
hinted  at  in  the  pantheism  of  Spinoza.  But  to  deny 
to  Mr.  Spencer  the  entire  credit  for  the  conception 
would  be  equivalent  to  denying  to  Dalton  the  entire 
credit  for  the  atomistic  theory  because  it  was  taught 


II  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  8 1 

by  Democritus  in  the  eightieth  Olympiad.  The  con- 
ception of  evolution  and  dissolution  is  as  old  as  his- 
tory, but  undoubtedly  it  was  original  with  Mr.  Spencer. 
It  is  a  conception  which  he  alone  has  wrought  out 
with  the  implements  of  science.  He  alone  has  placed 
that  conception  upon  a  basis  of  solid  fact  and,  by  his 
exposition  of  it,  has  forced  a  readjustment  of  scientific 
thought.  In  his  hands  it  has  altered  the  methods  of 
education  in  every  civilized  land ;  and  if  it  is  now 
common  property  it  is  only  because  Mr.  Spencer  has 
made  it  common  property. 

Our  object  is  neither  to  criticise  nor  propound  the 
philosophy  of  evolution.  We  have  rather  to  consider 
the  phenomena  of  social  life  in  so  far  as  we  can  dis- 
cover under  what  law  they  may  be  grouped,  in  what 
direction  the  motions  set  up  by  the  forces  at  work  are 
tending,  and  with  what  safety  we  may  predict  the 
final  effect  of  the  activities  we  see.  In  doing  this  we 
shall  be  constructing  a  theory  which,  if  it  shall  prove 
to  be  true,  shall  add  measurably  to  the  quantity  of 
knowledge  which  man  possesses  about  himself.  We 
shall  endeavor  to  arrive  at  a  generalization  in  which 
may  be  broadly  expressed  the  nature  of  the  causes 
of  social  action,  the  mode  in  which  these  causes 
operate  among  themselves,  and  the  product  which 
springs  from  these  activities.  Again  we  beg  the 
patience  of  the  reader  in  following  us  along  familiar 
paths,  and  in  considering  with  us  familiar  truths.  It 
is  only  by  this  method  we  can  arrive  at  our  much 
desired  goal.  Familiar  facts  assume  new  importance 
when  relations  between  them,  unperceived  before,  are 
brought  into  view.  If  the  structure  we  hope  to  build 
is  to  be  enduring,  it  must  rest  on  the  sure  foundations 


82  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

which  are  already  laid.  And  a  knowledge  of  the 
ground-plan  of  those  foundations  is  necessary  to  a 
comprehension  of  the  harmony  in  the  superstructure. 

The  only  good  method  of  forming  a  theory  of 
social  evolution  will  be  to  discover,  first,  the  proxi- 
mate purpose  toward  which  all  social  motions  are 
directed;  then  to  understand  the  means  by  which 
these  motions  are  carried  forward,  and  lastly  to  deter- 
mine the  state  of  society  when  that  purpose  shall 
have  been  wrought  out.  It  should  be  clear  that  if  we 
can  accurately  ascertain  the  first  and  the  second  of 
these  desiderata,  we  can  certainly  form  a  more  or  less 
accurate  conception  of  the  third.  Speculation  which 
takes  no  account  of  the  commonplace  needs  of  men, 
or  neglects  to  keep  close  to  the  means  by  which  these 
needs  are  supplied,  must  always  be  wide  of  the  mark. 
And  we  shall  see  that  if  we  are  to  arrive  at  a  con- 
clusion which  shall  satisfy  our  highest  conceptions  of 
man's  place  in  the  scheme  of  things  universal,  we  can 
come  to  it  only  by  a  consideration  of  the  entire  struc- 
ture of  man  in  all  his  aspects.  Out  of  the  play  of  the 
forces  supplying  the  vulgar  wants  of  the  human  body, 
and  gratifying  desires  deemed  base  by  some,  may 
arise  a  social  structure  of  surpassing  beauty  and  of 
proportions  appealing  to  the  highest  ideals  of  justice, 
of  spirituality,  and  of  aspiration. 

To  use  a  trite  metaphor,  we  do  not  commonly  de- 
spise a  rose  because  its  roots  are  to  be  found  in  dirt ; 
we  rather  the  more  admire  the  rose  when  we  come  to 
trace  the  stages  of  its  growth,  the  intimate  process 
by  which  it  gathers  its  exquisite  colors,  and  the 
manner  in  which  it  reproduces  itself  with  each  re- 
turning summer.  When  we  learn  that  pity  and  love 


II  BASIC   FORCES   AND   FUNCTIONS  83 

—  the  two  most  exquisitely  beautiful  and  tender  sen- 
timents of  a  noble  humanity  —  are  sprung  even  from 
the  reek  of  shambles,  and  from  the  passionately  cruel 
instincts  of  life,  we  can  but  all  the  more  wonder  at 
the  perfection  of  that  beauty  and  the  beauty  of  that 
tenderness.  When  we  learn  that  man,  from  the  ruin 
of  countless  lives,  and  from  sorrow  inconceivable,  has 
plucked  the  secret  of  life  without  stint  and  of  joy 
without  stay,  we  can  contemplate  the  ages,  if  not 
with  a  smile  of  serenity,  at  least  without  a  shudder  of 
pain. 


CHAPTER  III 

ORGANISM   AND    ENVIRONMENT 

AN  inquiry  into  the  methods  of  social  action  will 
be  greatly  simplified  if  we  conceive  of  society  as  an 
organism,  surrounded  by  an  environment,  and  subject 
to  certain  changes  caused  by  the  forces  of  environ- 
ment acting  upon  the  plastic  substance  of  the  organ- 
ism itself. 

This  is  an  idea  familiar  to  observers  of  social  life 
ever  since  the  advent  of  the  development  theory,  as 
first  propounded  by  Darwin  and  Wallace,  and  en- 
larged, more  or  less,  by  subsequent  investigators. 
Analogy  of  the  body  social  to  the  individual  organism 
has  been  carried  very  far  by  some  writers.  The  con- 
ception is  very  alluring  at  first  sight  and  has  led  many 
scholars  into  flights  of  fancy  condemned  by  cautious 
critics.  While  these  latter  admit  that  the  analogy  is 
close,  they  hold  that  there  is  no  warrant  for  the  belief 
that  society,  in  its  general  structure  and  function,  is 
really  an  organism  in  the  sense  that  the  body  of  a 
living  creature  is  an  organism.  But  even  if  we  admit 
the  force  of  this  distinction,  we  are  still  perfectly 
certain  that  society  is  an  organized  whole,  composed 
of  various  structures,  each  of  which  has  its  functions, 
and  each  of  which  acts  coordinately  with  the  other 
organs  making  up  the  entire  social  body. 

84 


CHAP,  in  ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  85 

This  conception  of  society  is  not  only  perfectly 
rational  but  perfectly  true.  It  simply  takes  into 
account  that  social  division  of  labor  which  corresponds 
with  the  physiological  division  of  labor  seen  in  all 
living  things  from  the  simplest  up  to  the  most  com- 
plex. There  is  organization  of  the  highest  kind  in 
government,  and  in  those  institutions  which  carry  on 
the  commercial,  educational,  and  industrial  business 
of  a  community.  But  this  will  be  admitted  by  every- 
body. It  will  be  admitted,  too,  that  the  movements 
of  a  social  organism,  and  its  form,  are  largely  affected 
by  the  environment  by  which  it  is  surrounded.  Cli- 
mate, the  food  supply,  the  natural  mineral  wealth  of 
the  locality  in  which  it  lives,  the  agricultural  possibil- 
ities of  the  soil,  and  the  character,  or  strength,  of 
contiguous  communities  —  all  have  an  important  ef- 
fect upon  a  social  group.  These  determine  the  nature 
of  its  industries,  its  degree  of  prosperity,  the  number 
of  its  population,  the  state  of  its  general  intelligence, 
and  its  power  as  a  member  of  the  great  family  of 
nations  of  which  human  society  is  constituted.  There 
are  other  factors  to  be  taken  into  consideration,  but 
with  these  we  need  not  at  present  concern  ourselves. 

Now  if  we  look  more  carefully  into  the  movements 
of  a  social  group,  we  shall  observe  that  these  move- 
ments are  of  a  purely  mechanical  nature.  We  must 
not  here  fall  into  the  error  of  supposing  that  these 
motions  are  only  analogous  to  the  actions  of  a  ma- 
chine. They  are  as  really  and  truly  mechanical  as 
those  of  a  printing-press  or  a  steam  engine.  This  is 
true  not  only  of  a  group  of  living  things,  but  of  every 
individual  living  organism  as  well.  The  statement  is 
not  at  all  a  figure  of  speech  or  a  conception  of  the 


86  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

fancy  or  of  the  imagination.  It  is  a  positive  fact. 
All  living  organisms  are  mechanisms,  and  their  action 
is  purely  mechanical.  This  truth  is  all-inclusive.  It 
applies  to  the  simplest  and  the  lowest  order  of  living 
creatures  as  well  as  to  the  highest.  A  common  cell 
—  the  unit  by  which  all  living  bodies  are  built  up  —  is 
itself  a  machine ;  and  not  so  simple  a  machine  as  was 
at  first  believed.  The  discovery  of  this  important  fact 
has  caused  a  profound  modification  in  very  recent 
years  of  the  views  of  biologists  with  respect  to  the 
origin  of  life.  The  body  of  a  man  is  as  purely  a 
mechanical  structure  as  is  a  printing-press  or  a  watch. 
True,  it  is  vastly  more  complicated  than  either  of 
these  devices,  but  the  principles  upon  which  it  is 
constructed  are  of  the  same  kind  as  those  upon  which 
a  watch  or  a  printing-press  is  built. 

But  between  living  machines,  or  organisms,  and 
all  human  devices  there. are  important  differences. 
The  structure  of  a  living  machine  responds  in  peculiar 
ways  to  certain  changes  effected  in  the  environment 
about  it,  while  that  of  an  artificial  machine  does  not. 
Then,  again,  one  of  the  functions  of  living  machines, 
and  some  other  natural  machines,  not  supposed  to  be 
alive,  is  the  reproduction  of  other  machines  just  like 
themselves  in  all  important  particulars;  a  function 
which  no  artificial  machine  is  observed  to  possess. 
Otherwise  stated,  the  natural  machine,  whether  it  be 
living  or  not,  presents  the  phenomenon  of  growth  — 
either  growth  with  reproduction,  or  growth  without  it. 
In  other  respects  the  likeness  between  the  natural 
and  the  artificial  machine  is  very  close. 

The  progress  from  the  simplest  kind  of  a  mechani- 
cal device  made  by  man  up  to  the  most  complicated 


ill  ORGANISM   AND    ENVIRONMENT  87 

one,  consists  only  in  the  increase  of  the  number  of 
parts,  and  their  mutual  bearings  when  the  machine 
is  set  in  motion.  A  common  domestic  coffee-mill 
consists  of  only  five  or  six  parts,  whereas  a  clock 
consists  of  many  more.  And  between  an  ordinary 
clock  and  one  which  shows  the  year,  month,  day, 
hour,  minute,  and  second,  the  phases  of  the  moon, 
the  seasons,  and  enacts  with  puppets  the  drama  of 
the  death  of  Christ,  the  difference  is  very  great 
indeed.  But  such  difference  lies  only  in  the  multi- 
plicity of  the  parts  of  the  clock  and  the  functions 
pertaining  to  these  parts.  More  complex  still  is  the 
machinery  used  in  the  manufacture  of  fine  watches, 
and  in  numerous  other  branches  of  industry.  Of  a 
precisely  similar  nature  are  the  differences  between 
the  mechanical  contrivances  made  by  natural  forces. 
From  an  amoeba  up  to  a  man,  there  is  seen,  in  the 
various  classes  of  animals  that  lie  between  these 
extremes,  only  an  increasingly  large  number  of  parts 
with  correspondingly  complex  functions. 

The  mechanical  nature  of  the  movements  of  living 
organisms  includes  all  the  movements  of  the  organ- 
ism. The  action  of  the  internal  organs  with  relation 
to  one  another- — which  constitute  what  we  call  vitat 
processes  —  are  purely  mechanical,  and  the  same  is 
true  of  the  actions  of  the  organism  as  an  united 
whole  with  relation  to  the  things  surrounding  it 
which,  for  the  sake  of  brevity,  have  been  called  its 
environment.  If  we  are  to  conceive  society  as  an  or- 
ganism, we  are  compelled  to  extend  to  its  movements 
—  and  to  all  of  its  movements  —  this  mechanical 
principle  of  action.  And  this  extension  will  be  found 
to  be  perfectly  rational  and  perfectly  true  when  we 


88  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

take  up  the  various  structures  of  which  society  is 
composed,  their  movements  within  the  body  of  soci- 
ety itself,  and  the  movements  of  that  body  with  rela- 
tion to  the  environment  by  which  it  is  surrounded. 
We  shall  find,  too,  that  societies  grow  more  complex 
just  as  do  individual  organisms,  and  that  the  differ- 
ences between  societies  are  precisely  the  same  as  the 
differences  between  the  individual  machines  —  some 
are  more  complex  than  others,  having  many  more 
parts;  some  are  more  powerful,  some  more  plastic, 
some  capable  of  more  intricate  movements,  both 
with  concern  to  internal  organs  and  with  concern  to 
environment;  but  that  the  movements  of  all  are  the 
same  in  kind. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  here  to  dwell  upon  the 
theory  of  natural  selection.  In  its  general  prin- 
ciples it  is  so  well  understood,  now,  by  all  cultured 
people,  that  a  mere  reference  to  it  by  name  should 
be  sufficient  to  connote  the  facts  which  the  present 
discussion  of  social  evolution  accepts  as  proved. 
Yet  some  little  time  must  be  spent  in  the  considera- 
tion of  this  subject,  for  it  is  not  everybody  who  is 
interested  in  social  questions  that  comprehends  even 
the  outlines  of  Darwin's  scheme.  Still  less  does 
everybody  who  considers  himself  competent  to  pass 
judgment  upon  the  needs  of  society  understand  the 
very  vital  connection  that  exists  between  social 
phenomena .  and  the  purely  physical  functions  of 
individual  men.  We  cannot  too  emphatically  insist 
upon  this  necessity  of  always  associating  the  social 
process  with  the  vital  process.  It  is  pure  waste  of 
time  and  energy  for  any  man,  or  party  of  men,  to 
attempt  to  understand  the  principles  of  social  action 


in  ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  89 

without  first  understanding  the  principles  of  indi- 
vidual action.  Among  scientific  men,  this  is  an 
axiomatic  truth. 

But  all  are  not  scientific  men.  The  very  great 
majority  of  persons  who  are  most  actively  engaged 
in  the  work  of  social  reform  are  far  from  "  scientific." 
Their  "  studies  "  consist  largely  in  the  observation  of 
persons  afflicted  with  poverty  or  vice,  and  in  the 
discussion  of  methods  of  improving  the  minds  of  the 
"lower  classes."  They  are  only  remotely  interested, 
if  at  all,  in  the  intimate  movements  of  the  cells  of  the 
brain,  the  development  of  a  mature  organism  from 
the  egg,  or  the  causes  which  produce  the  very 
"  evils "  which  they  seek  to  remove.  They  can 
never  hope  to  learn  why  the  "  lower  classes "  are 
poor,  why  men  indulge  in  destructive  intemperance, 
why  theft  and  murder  are  commonplace,  and  why  a 
few  men  have  a  superfluity  of  wealth,  while  the 
many  have  only  a  dearth,  until  they  have  learned 
the  methods  by  which  the  individual  organism  acts, 
and  hence  the  social.  We  will  admit  that  it  is  not 
necessary  that  they  should  understand  these  causes 
in  order  to  work  out  some  of  the  changes  they 
desire.  But  we  must  insist  that  they  can  never 
form  a  rational  conception  of  what  social  life  actu- 
ally means,  and  to  what  end  it  is  tending,  until  they 
acquaint  themselves  with  causes  the  effects  of  which 
they  are  striving  so  earnestly  to  alter. 

For  the  sake  of  driving  this  point  home,  let  us 
enlarge  upon  an  illustration  suggested  in  the  preced- 
ing chapter.  Until  recent  years  epidemics  of  Asiatic 
cholera  were  more  or  less  frequent  in  Europe  and 
even  in  America.  Men  were  powerless  before  the 


9O  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

onward  sweep  of  this  destructive  disease.  They 
knew  that  it  was  communicated  from  one  person  to  an- 
other, and  from  one  country  to  another.  They  knew 
that  a  plague  of  cholera  was  more  to  be  dreaded 
than  conflagrations  which  destroyed  whole  cities ; 
than  failures  of  crops ;  than  bloody  wars  or  revolu- 
tions. They  knew  and  fully  realized  with  what 
devastation,  and  with  what  horror,  an  epidemic  of 
cholera  overran  the  world.  But  what  could  they  do 
to  prevent  it?  Nothing.  They  were  helpless  and 
hopeless  so  long  as  they  were  in  ignorance  of  the 
cause  of  cholera,  and  the  method  by  which  it  was 
propagated.  Meetings  of  legislatures,  the  prayers 
of  common  men  and  of  ecclesiastical  officials,  the 
edicts  of  kings,  and  the  offices  of  physicians  were 
swept  aside  by  cholera  as  wisps  of  straw  in  a  mighty 
flame.  Legislators,  kings,  priests,  physicians,  and 
nurses  were  one  and  all  themselves  ridden  by  the 
plague. 

But  all  these  things  were  quickly  changed  when  it 
was  discovered  that  cholera  was  caused  by  the  pres- 
ence in  the  intestines  of  a  microscopic  vegetable 
germ ;  that  this  germ  could  be  communicated  only  by 
passing  through  the  mouth  of  a  human  being  into  his 
stomach  and  bowels ;  that  the  usual  vehicle  for  this 
communication  was  water ;  that  by  boiling  the  water 
the  power  of  the  germ  to  multiply  itself  was  removed ; 
and  that  if  the  food  and  hands  of  nurses  and  physi- 
cians were  carefully  sterilized,  they  would  be  im- 
mune from  the  disease.  At  the  very  first  opportu- 
nity of  fighting  cholera  with  these  instruments,  the 
disease  was  stopped  at  its  source  in  Europe,  and 
what  had  been  a  plague  on  two  continents  before 


in  ORGANISM  AND   ENVIRONMENT  91 

that  discovery  was  made,  was  confined  to  compar- 
atively few  cases  at  its  first  appearance,  and  was 
stamped  out  in  the  following  year.  Patients  with 
cholera  in  the  city  of  Hamburg  were  treated  and 
nursed  by  physicians  and  attendants  who  were  per- 
fectly fearless  of  contagion  and  whom  the  disease 
did  not  touch.  Students  flocked  to  Germany  from 
many  parts  of  the  world  to  study  the  symptoms  of 
the  disease  in  the  assurance  of  perfect  security. 
And  if  any  human  being  now  wishes  to  escape 
cholera  all  he  need  do  is  to  sterilize  his  food. 

But  is  not  the  present  state  of  men,  with  concern 
to  those  evils  of  which  they  so  bitterly  complain,  very 
much  the  same  as  was  that  of  Europe  with  concern 
to  cholera  before  the  discovery  of  the  comma  bacillus 
by  Koch  ?  Is  it  not  clear  that  a  savage  who  knew 
nothing  of  the  laws  of  optics,  who  had  never  seen  a 
microscope,  and  who  was  hence  totally  ignorant  of 
the  germ  theory  of  disease,  could  not  possibly  under- 
stand how  to  prevent  cholera  by  means  of  steriliza- 
tion ?  Yet  almost  all  the  reformers  are  quite  as 
ignorant  of  the  causes  of  social  suffering  as  were 
Europeans  of  the  eighteenth  century  of  the  causes 
of  the  Asiatic  plague.  This  digression  will  not  have 
been  without  its  intended  effect  if  it  shall  have  em- 
phasized the  necessity  of  comprehending  the  rela- 
tions of  the  organism  to  the  environment  in  all  studies 
which  aim  to  clear  up  social  problems. 

The  theory  of  natural  selection  explains  the  differ- 
ences we  see  in  species  by  pointing  out  the  effect  of 
inheritance  and  adaptation  upon  the  plastic  bodies  of 
living  mechanisms.  All  animals  tend  to  vary  from 
their  parents  in  some  slight  particulars.  Variations 


92  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

useful  to  the  organism  have  been  preserved  and 
developed  by  natural  selection,  until  we  see  in  the 
accumulation  of  effects  the  most  divergent  types. 
It  is  not  so  much  that  nature  preserves  those  that 
are  best  fitted  to  survive,  as  that  it  eliminates  those 
that  are  not  so  fitted.  Spencer's  famous  phrase, 
"  Survival  of  the  Fittest "  has  been  therefore  recently 
amended  to  "  Elimination  of  the  Unfit."  The  organ- 
ism which  can  best  adapt  itself  to  its  surroundings  is 
the  organism  which  will  thrive  best  in  those  surround- 
ings. This  truth  is  self-evident.  The  degree  in 
which  the  organism  may  have  been  developed  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  question.  The  strongest  or 
the  weakest,  the  craftiest  or  the  most  stupid  animal, 
may  be  the  one  which  can  best  live  in  any  particular 
environment,  and  that  is  the  animal  that  survives. 
All  others  must  perish.  Fitness  has  reference  only 
to  the  surroundings  in  which  the  animal  is  forced 
to  live.  The  American  sage-brush  grows  with  exu- 
berant vigor  and  astonishing  fecundity  on  dry,  alka- 
line deserts  where  an  attempt  to  raise  wheat  or 
oranges  would  fail.  A  human  being,  no  matter 
how  intelligent  or  ingenious,  could  not  exist  in  cir- 
cumstances which  favor  the  growth  and  multiplica- 
tion of  sharks  or  of  crocodiles. 

How  nearly  the  nature  of  the  environment  concerns 
the  well-being  of  an  organism  is  seen  at  once  when 
the  environment  is  changed.  If  the  change  be 
great,  the  sufferings  of  the  organism  are  correspond- 
ingly severe.  When  the  extreme  opposite  of  the 
environment  in  which  an  organism  thrives  is  substi- 
tuted for  the  favorable  one,  the  animal  dies.  Plunge 
the  air-breathing  animal  into  water,  or  place  it  under 


in  ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  93 

a  receiver  and  exhaust  the  atmosphere,  and  death 
ensues.  Remove  a  fish  from  water,  and  the  same 
effect  is  seen.  Between  the  extremes  are  all  degrees 
of  pain  and  comfort,  loss  and  thrift. 

Organisms  depend  upon  two  forces,  broadly  speak- 
ing, for  their  ability  to  thrive  in  any  special  environ- 
ment. These  are,  first,  the  physical  characters  they 
inherit  from  their  parents,  and,  secondly,  their  power 
of  adapting  themselves  to  the  conditions  under  which 
they  are  forced  to  live.  Let  us  take,  for  example, 
the  familiar  illustration  of  the  deer.  These  animals 
are  proverbial  for  their  keen  sense  of  hearing  and 
their  great  fleetness  of  foot.  Among  a  race  of  deer 
living  in  a  locality  with  predacious  beasts  which  used 
deer  for  food,  it  is  plain  that  the  animals  which  had 
been  born  with  a  little  keener  sense  of  hearing  than 
the  others  would  be  most  likely  to  escape  their 
enemies,  and  to  reproduce  their  kind.  Among  the 
surviving  deer,  those  which  had  been  favored  with 
superior  fleetness  would  probably  escape  in  larger 
numbers  than  their  less  fleet  fellows,  and  go  on  propa- 
gating, while  the  slower  animals  would  be  eliminated 
by  the  carnivora.  This  process,  by  countless  repeti- 
tions, would  in  time  produce  the  very  high  state  in 
which  we  at  present  find  these  two  characters  among 
deer. 

Such  is  the  part  played  by  inheritance  in  the  de- 
velopment of  species.  Let  us  now  suppose  that  a 
number  of  deer  are  forced  into  an  environment  in 
which  the  ground  is  covered  with  snow  for  the  major 
part  of  the  year.  While  there  may  be  sufficient  vege- 
tation under  the  snow  to  serve  as  food  for  the  deer, 
yet  were  they  unable  to  secure  it,  the  race  must  inevi- 


94  THE  LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

tably  die.  But  if  we  suppose  that  some  of  the  deer 
discover  that,  by  scraping  the  snow  with  their  feet, 
they  can  find  edible  mosses,  it  is  clear  that  those 
individuals  which  take  advantage  of  that  discovery 
will  survive.  Furthermore,  those  which  will  most 
readily  acquire  skill  in  locating  the  mosses  will  be  the 
most  favored.  The  young  of  every  generation  will 
be  taught  the  practice,  and  will  acquire  certain  char- 
acters in  the  form  of  the  muscles  of  the  leg,  and  in 
the  form  of  the  foot,  distinguishing  the  race  from 
other  groups  of  the  genus  Cervus.  In  this  manner 
the  power  of  adaptation  to  the  environment  enables 
those  individuals  who  possess  it  to  survive  and  propa- 
gate, while  those  who  lack  that  power  must  perish. 

The  question  of  the  transmission  of  acquired  char- 
acters is  at  the  present  time  in  some  dispute  among 
zoologists.  Darwin  himself  fully  believed  that  these 
characters  were  transmitted.  Wallace,  who  advanced 
the  theory  of  natural  selection  simultaneously  with 
Darwin  and  independently  of  him,  also  holds  the 
opinion  that  the  characters  so  acquired  are  trans- 
mitted to  offspring.  Other  naturalists  follow  the 
great  originals  and  support  their  views  with  ingen- 
ious arguments.  The  contrary  opinion  is  maintained 
by  August  Weismann,  the  German  biologist,  and  his 
school,  who  believe  that  no  acquired  character  is 
ever  transmitted,  but  that  variation  and  inheritance 
are  alone  used  by  natural  selection  in  the  transmuta- 
tion of  species.  The  merits  of  this  dispute  have  little 
to  do  with  the  present  phase  of  our  subject.  It  may 
be  well  to  state  here  that  Weismann's  theory  is  as 
yet  unproved  and  that  it  would  be  unwise  to  draw 
from  it  any  general  conclusions  concerning  human 


in  ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  95 

society.  We  are  convinced,  moreover,  that  the  prime 
importance  attached  to  this  theory  with  concern  to 
society  is  needless,  and  perhaps  unscientifically  exag- 
gerated by  many  biologists.  As  this  theory  is  con- 
stantly and  insistently  brought  forward  by  zoologists 
as  having,  if  true,  the  most  vital  influence  on  social 
evolution,  we  must  not  dismiss  it  without  some  exami- 
nation of  these  claims. 

According  to  Weismann,  acquired  characters  are 
not  transmitted.  Thus,  if  a  man  is  not  born  with  an 
appetite  for  alcohol  he  cannot  transmit  it  to  his  off- 
spring. He  may  acquire  a  strong  appetite  for  drink 
in  his  youth,  live  his  whole  life  long  a  slave  to  it,  and 
yet  beget  children  who  will  in  no  wise  inherit  the 
desire.  On  the  contrary,  should  the  desire  for  alco- 
hol be  inborn  in  him,  nothing  he  can  do  can  prevent 
his  children  from  having  the  desire  themselves.  The 
parent  may  never  indulge  the  appetite.  He  may 
never  have  even  tasted  an  alcoholic  mixture.  Yet 
his  children  must  inherit  the  desire,  and  no  power 
can  interfere.  The  same  may  be  said  of  all  other 
characters  of  men,  whether  good  or  bad,  physical  or 
mental. 

Upon  superficial  examination,  this  may  seem  to  be 
indeed  a  most  important  consideration.  If  it  be 
true,  it  has  been  said,  there  is  small  hope  for  man- 
kind. If  men  with  the  innate  instincts  of  murderers, 
thieves,  sensualists,  and  drunkards,  are  to  pass  down 
to  posterity  the  worst  traits  of  their  nature,  what  can 
be  done  to  reform  the  world  ?  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  results  of  generations  of  right  living  by  individual 
members  of  society  are  really  nil,  and  count  as  noth- 
ing in  the  formation  of  the  characters  which  are  to 


96  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

mark  posterity,  what  assurance  have  we  that  society 
will  retain  for  any  length  of  time  the  effects  which 
have  been  wrought  out  by  centuries  of  progress  ?  It 
has  been  suggested  as  an  answer  to  these  questions 
that  if  care  be  taken  in  the  mating  of  human  beings, 
the  characters  of  the  offspring  can  be  determined. 
That  if  individuals  so  select  their  mates  as  to  prevent 
propagation  by  persons  who  inherit  undesirable  char- 
acters, these  characters  will  soon  be  eliminated. 

But  how  are  men  to  know  what  characters  are  in- 
herited and  what  acquired  ?  The  hopeless  inebriate, 
the  thief,  the  sensualist,  or  the  murderer,  may  be  far 
more  desirable  for  purposes  of  propagation  than  the 
individual  whose  conduct  is  without  flaw  of  any  kind. 
For  the  one  may  have  acquired  these  characters,  and 
will  beget  offspring  totally  devoid  of  them  ;  while  the 
other  may  have  inherited  them  and,  although  pre- 
vented by  circumstances  from  disclosing  them,  may 
pass  them  down  in  full  force  to  his  children.  So 
long  as  the  total  sum  of  vicious  propensity  remains 
constant  in  the  human  race,  there  can  be  no  assur- 
ance that  the  race  has  really  improved  in  the  past,  or 
can  be  brought  to  real  improvement  in  the  future.  The 
only  method  by  which  the  race  could  be  improved  — 
if  Weismann's  theory  be  true  —  is  the  very  method 
which  contains  within  itself  the  elements  of  the  high- 
est uncertainty  and  danger.  For  the  only  method  we 
have  of  judging  whether  or  not  undesirable  charac- 
ters be  inherited,  is  their  actual  presence  in  the  indi- 
vidual. If  they  are  plainly  present,  there  is  no 
evidence  they  are  not  really  acquired. 

But  while  Weismann's  theory  holds  that  acquired 
characters   are   not   transmitted,    it   holds   also   that 


in  ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  97 

variation  would  tend  to  eliminate  unfit  characters. 
For  example,  among  a  race  of  men  with  inherited 
appetites  for  alcohol,  would  appear  now  and  then 
certain  individuals  with  tendencies  in  the  opposite 
direction.  These  might  be  seized  upon  by  natural 
selection  and,  in  time,  supplant  those  with  an  inher- 
ited tendency  to  intemperance.  It  should  be  remem- 
bered that  we  are  here  engaged  in  applying  the 
Weismannic  theory  to  human  society.  Weismann 
himself  did  not  so  apply  it,  so  far  as  we  know.  It 
would  not  be  necessary  to  discuss  it  at  all,  were  it 
not  that  numerous  writers  have  attempted  to  show 
how  very  important  it  is  in  all  considerations  of  social 
life.  That  this  importance  has  been  grossly  exag- 
gerated we  have  already  remarked  ;  that  it  is  need- 
lessly so  exaggerated,  will,  we  think,  become  clear 
upon  a  closer  examination. 

Let  us  admit  that  this  theory  is  true.  There  is 
little  enough  warrant  for  the  admission,  but  let  us 
admit  it.  Does  it  follow  that  mankind  —  or  at  least 
the  civilized  part  of  mankind  —  is  necessarily  doomed 
to  a  return  to  the  savagery  of  its  ancestors,  or  that 
there  is  cause  for  apprehension  of  a  reversal  of  prog- 
ress and  the  decay  of  civilization  ?  Is  there  any 
adequate  reason  why  we  should  live  in  dread  of  the 
undoing  of  civilization  because  men  inherit  charac- 
ters undesirable  and  destructive  to  social  progress  ? 
For  answer  let  us  turn  to  the  theory  itself. 

Acquired  characters  —  according  to  Weismann  and 
to  the  school  of  Darwin  and  Wallace  also  —  are 
essentially  the  product  of  environment.  The  arm  of 
the  tennis  player  and  the  blacksmith,  the  muscular 
characters  of  the  human  leg,  the  atrophied  organs 


98  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

of  certain  parasitic  crabs,  the  shape  of  the  skull  in 
Choctaw  Indians,  the  dwarfed  foot  of  the  Chinese 
woman,  the  differences  between  members  of  the  same 
species  of  fruits  growing  in  different  climates,  are  all 
acquired  characters.  By  changing  the  environment 
the  most  striking  changes  in  characters  may  be  pro- 
duced in  the  plastic  substance  of  animal  and  vege- 
table organisms.  The  environment,  as  we  have  seen, 
may  be  altered  so  as  to  produce  death.  The  very 
power  possessed  by  an  organism  of  producing  ac- 
quired characters  by  adaptation  to  environment  is 
often  the  cause  of  survival.  And  continued  survival 
depends  upon  the  continuous  adaptation  of  new  gen- 
erations, as  in  the  case  of  the  reindeer,  which  has 
been  used  as  a  more  or  less  fanciful  illustration  of 
the  operation  of  natural  selection  in  the  preservation 
and  development  of  species. 

If,  now,  we  apply  this  conception  of  acquired 
characters  to  human  society,  we  shall  find  that  the 
environment  plays  just  as  important  a  part  there  as 
it  does  among  lower  organisms.  When  we  speak  of 
the  struggle  for  existence  among  men,  we  do  not 
mean  precisely  what  is  meant  by  the  same  phrase  as 
applied  to  other  living  beings.  Among  the  latter  the 
struggle  is  really  one  of  life  and  death.  The  unfit 
are  eliminated ;  that  is,  they  die  before  they  can 
propagate.  Among  men,  as  between  themselves, 
there  is  really  no  struggle  of  this  kind.  Few  men 
die  of  starvation.  Sufficiently  large  numbers  of  indi- 
viduals survive  to  maintain  the  race.  Indeed,  the 
total  population  of  the  world  is  constantly  increasing. 
The  struggle  between  men  is  not  really  a  fight  for 
life  itself  and  its  propagation,  but  rather  for  possession 


in  ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  99 

of  larger  means  of  gratifying  the  desires  which  grow 
out  of  the  satisfaction  derived  from  the  functions  of 
living.  If  we  replace  the  phrase  "  struggle  for  exist- 
ence" with  that  of  "struggle  for  ampler  existence," 
we  shall  more  nearly  describe  the  process  going  on 
among  the  integers  of  human  society. 

There  is  a  real  struggle  for  existence  going  on 
between  men  and  other  races,  but  the  struggle  has  no 
all-important  effect  on  the  propagation  of  the  human 
race.  Millions  of  human  beings  die  every  year  as 
victims  to  organisms  which  feed  upon  the  human 
body.  The  majority  of  individuals  born  are  elimi- 
nated before  they  reach  the  age  at  which  they  can 
propagate.  Others  are  destroyed  for  food,  after  they 
have  passed  the  age  of  propagation,  by  micro-organ- 
isms, the  presence  of  which  in  the  human  body 
has  been  called  disease.  But  we  can  minimize  the 
importance  of  this  struggle  because  it  has  really 
no  effect  upon  the  existence  of  the  human  race.  In 
spite  of  it,  the  human  race  progresses  numerically  — 
especially  in  civilized  countries,  where  much  has  been 
done  to  prevent  the  propagation  in  men's  bodies  of 
those  races  of  micro-organisms  which  live  upon  man, 
and  destroy  his  life  in  the  process.  Apart,  then, 
from  the  struggle  of  the  human  race  with  these 
microscopic  organisms,  there  is  no  struggle  for  exist- 
ence for  very  life  itself  among  men.  Man,  as  a  race, 
is  the  most  powerful  animal  known. 

But,  if  this  is  true,  it  is  true  because  man's  environ- 
ment has  had  a  far-reaching  effect  upon  him  both  as 
an  individual  and  as  a  race.  Whatever  may  have 
been  his  inherited  characters,  the  environment  has  so 
shaped  them  as  to  produce  the  civilization  we  now 


100  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

see.  If  the  head  of  a  human  being  can  be  moulded 
into  a  shape  different  from  that  of  the  normal,  thus 
producing  an  acquired  character  of  a  striking  kind, 
inherited  tendencies  of  mind  can  be  moulded  so  as  to 
produce  mental  characters  very  different  from  the 
so-called  natural  ones.  It  is  purely  a  question  of  en- 
vironment. We  can  admit  the  Weismannic  theory, 
and  yet  hold  that  all  the  characters  which  distinguish 
the  modern  civilized  man  from  the  ancients  are  ac- 
quired. But  when  we  see  that  acquired  characters 
have  changed  the  entire  face  of  civilization,  and  have 
so  dominated  inherited  characters  that  the  latter, 
when  disclosed,  tend  to  destroy  the  individual  who 
possesses  them,  the  importance  of  acquired  characters 
becomes  prime.  Let  us  admit  that  all  men  inherit  a 
desire  to  kill  and  to  rob.  Is  it  not  nevertheless  cer- 
tain that  these  inherited  characters  are  practically 
eliminated  in  most  civilized  men  by  the  acquired 
characters  of  sympathy  and  honesty  ? 

Let  us  admit  that  the  citizen  of  London  is  to-day 
born  with  the  same  characters  which  distinguished 
the  Roman  citizen  of  two  thousand  years  ago.  Does 
it  follow  that  London  citizens  are  therefore  liable  to 
build  a  colosseum  and  produce  gladiatorial  spectacles 
in  which  prisoners  of  war  are  forced  to  kill  one 
another  ?  Or  that  a  monarch  such  as  Domitian  or 
Nero  could  for  a  moment  exist  in  Europe  or  Amer- 
ica ?  Bear-baiting  was  common  in  England  a  few 
centuries  ago.  It  is  indifferent  whether  the  practice 
was  abolished,  as  some  claim,  not  because  of  sym- 
pathy with  the  bear,  but  because  of  the  desecration 
of  the  Sabbath !  Bear-baiting  would  not  be  per- 
mitted to-day  in  England  because  public  sympathy 


in  ORGANISM   AND    ENVIRONMENT  IOI 

would  stop  it.  The  common  belief  is  that  it  was  for- 
bidden because  public  sympathy  was  shocked  by  the 
practice. 

Whether  acquired  characters  are  transmitted  or  not 
is  a  matter  of  absolute  indifference,  when  undesirable 
inherited  characters  are  minimized,  or  apparently 
eliminated,  by  those  which  are  acquired.  The  man 
born  without  sympathy  can,  as  we  know  by  force  of 
training — and  training  is  environment  —  be  brought 
to  a  state  of  mind  which  shudders  at  the  bare  thought 
of  cruelty.  If  sympathy  be  an  acquired  character, 
then  all  the  other  social  characters  which  distinguish 
civilized  men  from  savages  are  also  acquired.  We 
can  admit  that  the  ancient  Romans  were  born  with 
the  same  propensities  as  men  of  to-day.  We  know 
that  parasitic  crabs  are  born  with  organs  fully  devel- 
oped. But  the  life  of  the  crab  depends  upon  the 
adjustment  of  its  organs  to  its  parasitic  environment. 
Its  inherited  characters  must  be  overcome  by  its 
acquired  characters,  or  it  must  die.  And  it  is  much 
the  same  with  men. 

Too  much  caution  cannot  be  exercised  in  applying 
the  Weismannic  theory  to  human  society.  Wildly 
to  leap  at  conclusions  in  this  respect  will  be  found  to 
lead  one  to  very  absurd  positions.  Much  of  the 
writings  of  biologists,  and  others,  who  so  apply  that 
theory  are  suggestive  of  the  imaginary  character  of 
the  premises  dealt  with.  It  is  very  easy  to  discuss 
"  inherited  appetite  for  alcohol."  But  it  is  not  so  easy 
to  prove  that  any  such  appetite  exists,  or  to  show  how 
it  was  produced,  except  on  the  theory  that  acquired 
characters  are  transmitted.  And  with  this  admission 
all  discussion  of  Weismann's  theory  vanishes. 


102  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

It  will  be  admitted  that  no  man  could  inherit  an 
appetite  for  alcohol  before  the  production  of  alcohol 
by  artificial  means.  He  might  be  born  with  ner- 
vous and  alimentary  variations  which  would  respond 
readily  to  stimuli  of  a  peculiar  nature ;  but  this  char- 
acter is  not  only  common  to  all  men  but  to  all  other 
living  things.  The  appetite  for  alcohol  is  in  no  wise 
different,  in  its  causes,  from  the  appetite  for  tea  or 
coffee.  These  substances  are  all  intimately  associ- 
ated with  nutrition.  It  is  about  as  pertinent  to  the 
subject  to  discuss  with  gravity  the  inherited  appetite 
of  men  for  bread,  or  the  acquired  appetite  of  men  for 
curry  or  cayenne  pepper.  The  susceptibility  of  the 
nervous  apparatus  to  stimuli  in  general  has  an  im- 
portant bearing  on  all  appetites,  and  every  high 
organism  is  born  with  that  susceptibility  more  or  less 
emphasized.  Among  the  Chinese,  from  whom  the 
appetite  for  alcohol  is  notably  absent,  there  is  a  very 
pronounced  appetite  for  opium.  And  if  we  are  to 
say  that  such  desires  are  inherited,  we  must  classify 
them  with  the  universal  desire  for  food  which  is 
found  in  all  living  creatures. 

We  are  not  aware  that  Weismann  carried  his  theory 
to  the  extent  of  applying  it  to  social  evolution,  as  has 
been  done  by  some  who  have  accepted  it  in  its  bio- 
logical significance,  and  by  others  who,  while  not 
finally  accepting  it,  have  indulged  in  speculation  as 
to  how  it  will  work  when  social  evolution  is  tested  by 
its  assumptions.  But  we  are  at  no  loss  to  see  how 
readily  the  theory  may  be  used  for  the  drawing  of 
absurd  conclusions,  when  it  is  carried  into  the  realm 
of  social  life.  The  sequel  will  show,  we  believe,  that 
there  is  no  occasion  for  allowing  Weismann's  theory 


in  ORGANISM   AND    ENVIRONMENT  1 03 

to  interfere  with  a  serene  contemplation  of  the  future 
of  man.  Even  if  it  be  true,  it  is  yet  clear  that  inher- 
ited characters  of  mind  may  be  changed  by  environ- 
mental forces  as  much  as  the  skull  of  a  Choctaw 
or  the  foot  of  a  Chinese  woman.  And  unless  we  can 
conceive  of  some  process  by  which  a  community  of 
Choctaws  could,  by  an  effort  of  the  will,  suddenly 
resume  the  ancestral  form  of  the  skull,  we  can  con- 
ceive of  no  sudden  disappearance  of  the  acquired 
flatness.  Furthermore,  unless  we  can  conceive  of  the 
disappearance  of  the  motive  for  pressing  flat  the 
skulls  of  newly  born  Choctaws,  we  cannot  conceive 
of  a  new  generation  suddenly  appearing  with  skulls 
of  the  unaltered  type.  If  men  born  with  murderous 
instincts  can  be  moulded  into  men  of  tender  sym- 
jathies,  we  cannot  conceive  of  a  race  of  murderers 
)eing  produced,  except  by  the  removal  of  the  motive 
which  compels  men  to  shape  the  minds  of  their  off- 
spring as  the  Choctaw  shapes  the  skull  of  his. 

It  will  not  be  pressing  the  analogy  between  the 
.ndividual,  as  an  organism,  and  society  as  such,  when 
we  point  out  the  similarity  in  the  methods  of  action 
3y  which  both  are  sustained.  The  conduct  of  an 
individual  who  finds  himself  in  a  painful  situation  is 
ixplained  only  on  mechanical  principles.  The  truth 
of  this  assertion  is  no  derogation  to  the  dignity  of 
man.  The  granting  that  man's  actions  are  as  purely 
mechanical  as  are  those  of  a  frog  or  of  a  watch,  by 
no  means  reduces  him  to  the  level  of  a  frog  or  a 
watch.  Those  who  so  contend  are  merely  shallow 
thinkers.  On  the  same  principle  they  could  contend 
that  because  man  is  a  true  mammal,  he  is  therefore 
10  better  than  a  porpoise  or  a  hippopotamus;  and 


T04  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

that  because  he  is  a  true  vertebrate,  he  is  no  higher 
in  the  scale  of  creation  than  a  snake.  But  apart 
from  any  and  all  such  absurd  conclusions,  there 
is  no  question  that  all  the  actions  of  an  individual 
man  are  mechanical.  His  environment,  his  relations 
to  his  environment,  and  his  structure,  are  infinitely 
more  complex  than  those  of  any  other  organism 
known,  but  that  is  the  only  difference  we  can  dis- 
cover. Yet  that  difference  is  by  no  means  so  easily 
understood  as  many  uncultured  persons  believe. 

The  mechanical  nature  of  the  movements  of  society 
has  long  been  acknowledged  by  the  usages  of  ordi- 
nary speech.  The  word  "  mechanism  "  is  commonly 
applied  to  those  organs  of  society  used  by  society  to 
maintain  its  integrity.  Many  of  the  mechanisms 
arise  naturally,  and  are  manifestly  as  much  the  prod- 
uct of  purely  natural  forces  as  are  the  organs  of  an 
animal,  or  the  color  of  the  human  skin.  These  we 
will  presently  consider  in  some  detail.  At  present 
we  may  glance  at  social  mechanisms  which  seem  to 
be  the  pure  invention  of  men. 

In  civilized  states  are  found  numerous  apparatuses 
used  in  the  work  of  government.  A  legislature  is 
nothing  more  or  less  than  a  complicated  machine, 
composed  of  several  parts  acting  in  coordination.  It 
has  a  process  of  action  and  a  product  of  action.  Its 
chairman,  its  clerk,  its  various  committees,  all  have 
specific  labors  to  perform,  and  these  labors  are  per- 
formed always  in  the  same  way.  The  method  of  the 
action  of  a  legislature  is  invariable,  and  is  determined 
by  "  rules "  made  by  its  creators.  The  intention  of 
its  creators  is  always  to  insure  perfect  regularity  in 
the  movements  of  the  creature.  The  products  of  the 


in  ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  105 

action  of  a  legislature  can  be  predicted  with  as  much 
certainty  as  can  the  products  of  the  machinery  in  a 
shoe  factory.  So  long  as  the  legislative  mechanism 
performs  the  function  for  which  its  structure  was 
built,  the  product  of  that  function  will  be  invariably  a 
law.  There  may  be  infinite  diversity  in  the  laws 
thus  produced,  but  all  these  laws  must  be  produced 
by  the  same  mechanical  method. 

A  legislature  is  probably  the  most  important  part 
of  the  entire  machinery  of  a  government — at  least 
of  a  government  more  or  less  democratic.  The  word 
"machinery"  is  not  here  used  in  a  metaphorical  sense 
at  all.  If  we  rightly  designate  a  locomotive  by  the 
word  "  machine,"  we  must  use  the  word  in  a  literal 
sense  when  we  apply  it  to  instruments  composed  of 
men,  and  used  for  the  enforcement  of  its  will  by  a 
state.  What  has  been  said  of  a  legislature  may  be 
said  of  every  other  organ  devised  by  states  for  the 
enforcement  of  laws.  The  mechanical  nature  of  a 
judiciary,  which,  while  it  may  seem  to  be  a  device  of 
free  and  arbitrary  invention,  is  really  no  such  thing, 
will  not  be  disputed ;  while  the  police  (and  we  include 
armies  and  navies  in  this  category)  are  proverbially 
the  most  striking  examples  of  governmental  mechan- 
isms. Now  the  perfection  of  these  instruments  must 
obviously  depend  upon  the  ingenuity  possessed  by 
their  creators  to  construct  a  machine  which  will  an- 
swer the  needs  of  the  state  using  it.  Of  a  necessity 
some  states  will  have  constructed  more  efficient  instru- 
ments than  other  states.  And  even  within  the  con- 
fines of  one  state  there  may  be  found  degrees  of 
efficiency  in  the  various  organs  invented  by  it  for 
the  purpose  of  preserving  internal  peace  and  defend- 


L      bOCIAL   MOTION 


ing  the  state  from  enemies  without.  As  examples 
we  may  cite,  on  the  one  hand,  representative  legis- 
lation and  trial  by  jury,  and,  on  the  other,  the  in- 
vention of  the  Roman  legion,  which  replaced  the 
Macedonian  phalanx,  and  which  has  survived  in  the 
regiment  of  the  modern  army.  The  Roman  legion 
was  found  to  be  a  far  more  efficient  machine  for  pur- 
poses of  war  than  was  the  phalanx  invented  by 
Alexander.  Representative  legislation  and  trial  by 
jury  can  hardly  be  compared  with  absolute  monarchy 
and  bench-made  law  as  mechanisms  for  the  satisfac- 
tory administration  of  justice  in  enlightened  states. 

Other  institutions  by  which  the  will  of  a  community 
is  carried  out,  and  common  needs  answered,  are  quite 
as  mechanical  as  are  governmental  institutions.     But 
the  purely  natural  origin  of  these  is  somewhat  more 
manifestly  evident  than  that  of  their  political  con- 
geners, although,  in  reality,  there  is  no  more  of  arti- 
ficial origin  or  construction  in  the  one  than  in  the 
other.     This  natural  origin  is  especially  manifest  in 
the  mechanism  of  exchange,  whereby  the  things  pro- 
duced  by  men's  labor  are  distributed  among  those 
who  create  them.     The  methods  by  which  goods  are 
circulated  are  much  the  same  in  all  parts  of  the  world, 
and  have  not  changed  within  time  which  is  measur- 
able by   history.     Before   they   can   be   distributed, 
goods  must  be  brought  to  some  central  place  from 
which  they  are  issued  to  consumers.     A  section  of 
country  in  which   agriculture  is  practised,  pours  its 
products  into  a  locality  most  available  for  the  easy 
distribution  of  those  products,  and  most  easily  acces- 
sible to  the  producer  and   the  consumer  alike.     A 
locality  in  which    manufactures    flourish   sends   its 


in  ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  1 07 

goods  to  other  centres  most  easily  accessible  to  the 
manufacturer,  and  to  those  who  demand  his  products. 
A  centre  used  for  the  collection  and  circulation  of 
goods  in  this  way  is  called  a  market.  This  flux  and 
reflux  of  the  things  created  by  human  labor  is  called 
trade.  The  process  by  which  each  individual  secures 
the  particular  things  he  desires,  by  the  surrender  of 
things  which  he  produces,  is  called  exchange.  It  will 
be  observed  that  the  nature  of  this  process  is  as 
purely  mechanical  as  any  phenomenon  in  nature. 
The  flow  of  goods  to  a  market  is  as  necessary,  in 
the  very  nature  of  the  purpose  to  be  served,  as  the 
flow  of  a  stream  to  the  sea,  or  the  movements  of  the 
parts  of  a  locomotive  when  they  are  assembled  in 
the  machine  and  power  applied.  No  less  mechanical 
are  the  processes  derived  from  the  primary  process 
of  exchange,  such  as  are  to  be  found  in  the  very 
complicated  structure  known  as  the  mechanism  of 
finance.  It  will  be  observed,  too,  that  the  purpose 
is  more  efficiently  served  as  the  instruments  approach 
mechanical  perfection. 

Thus,  in  its  political  and  economic  life,  is  society 
seen  to  be  a  machine ;  and  we  are  led  to  the  con- 
clusion that  social  action  is  mechanical  in  all  other 
respects.  This  should  not  be  a  startling  conclusion 
when  we  remember  how  very  mechanical  are  the 
actions  of  individual  men,  and  how  well  society  is 
served  by  the  instruments  which  nature  and  art  have 
given  it  for  its  two  necessary  functions  of  government 
and  economy. 

It  may  be  objected  that  the  conclusion  is  sweeping ; 
that  there  are  social  actions  which  cannot  be  classi- 
fied as  mechanical.  For  example,  the  practice  of 


IOS  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

medicine.  Physicians,  it  may  be  said,  while  they 
have  organized  societies  for  the  advancement  of  their 
art,  do  not  practise  that  art  in  any  organized  manner. 
The  great  body  of  physicians  consists  of  discrete  units 
operating  independently  of  one  another.  Each  indi- 
vidual acts  separately  from  all  the  others,  and  there 
is  no  united  effort  by  which  a  product  is  made,  and 
wherein  is  seen  the  sum  of  the  common  activity.  But 
this  objection  vanishes  when  we  consider  that  the  acts 
of  the  individual  physician  are  precisely  like  the  acts 
of  producers  of  commodities  who  convey  their  goods 
to  a  market.  The  skill  of  a  physician  is,  in  fact,  a 
commodity,  and,  as  with  goods  of  other  kinds,  the 
best  skill  can  be  found  in  the  markets  where  the 
demand  is  most  brisk. 

In  small  markets  we  can  see  the  mechanical  nature 
of  exchange  more  manifestly  shown  than  in  great  mar- 
kets where  complexity  of  function  and  structure  are 
apt  to  obscure  it.  To  Nijni  Novgorod  merchants  fetch 
their  commodities,  expose  them  for  sale,  and  exchange 
them  without  any  particular  relations  to  each  other, 
except  in  so  far  as  the  determination  of  price  is  con- 
cerned. Every  merchant  there  is  perfectly  indepen- 
dent of  every  other  merchant  save  in  this  one  respect. 
And  there  is  no  difference  between  Nijni  Novgorod 
and  London,  as  markets,  except  that  the  one  is  small 
and  transitory,  and  the  other  large  and  permanent. 
But  if  we  admit  that  exchange  of  goods  is  carried  on 
by  a  mechanical  process,  we  must  admit  also  that  the 
actions  of  the  medical  profession  are  of  the  same  kind. 
For  physicians,  although  discrete  in  their  functions, 
are  only  fetching  their  skill  to  a  market,  there  to 
exchange  it  for  other  utilities.  In  this  process  their  re< 


ill  ORGANISM   AND    ENVIRONMENT  109 

lations  to  one  another  are  precisely  the  same  as  those 
of  merchants  in  a  market  for  pure  trade.  These 
relations  determine  the  price  at  which  medical  skill  is 
sold,  and  are  as  purely  economic  as  those  of  com- 
peting venders  of  commodities.  The  physician  is 
himself  the  product  of  a  school  which,  like  other  in- 
stitutions for  purposes  of  education,  is  a  machine  in 
the  true  sense. 

What  is  true  of  the  medical  profession  is  true  of 
all  professions.  It  may  appear  that  the  sum  of  the 
actions  of  those  who  carry  on  scientific  investigations 
cannot  be  classified  with  that  of  merchants,  educators, 
artists,  physicians,  actors,  clergymen,  and  other  ser- 
vants who  give  their  services  in  exchange  for  eco- 
nomic utilities.  Yet  the  principle  of  utility  dominates 
the  actions  of  most  scientific  men.  These  earn  their 
livelihood  by  the  special  work  they  do.  But  even  if 
we  were  to  make  an  exception  of  them,  and  say  that 
they  are  all  pure  amateurs,  yet  the  general  process 
of  scientific  research  will  be  seen  to  be  necessarily 
mechanical.  Every  investigator  in  a  special  line  is 
merely  producing  a  part  —  and  almost  always  a  very 
small  part  —  of  a  structure  which  is  arising  slowly  in 
response  to  united  effort.  The  relations  of  these 
investigators  are  as  intimate  as  those  of  the  various 
craftsmen  who  construct  a  printing-press  or  a  house. 
Thus  we  see  that  all  social  actions,  whether  arising 
from  motives  of  politics,  economy,  religion,  education, 
art,  or  science,  are  performed  by  instruments  or 
organizations  mechanical  in  their  nature.  Given  the 
structure  of  the  machine  which  is  to  do  the  work  of 
society,  and  it  can  do  it  only  in  one  way.  A  legisla- 
ture, a  great  market,  an  university,  a  church,  a  theatre, 


IIO  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

a  factory,  a  farm,  are  all  examples  of  social  machines 
and  such  illustrations  can  be  extended  ad  libitum. 

At  the  bottom  of  these  interesting  facts  lies  the 
major  fact  that  society,  as  an  integrated  whole,  is 
itself  a  mechanical  structure,  of  which  the  various 
processes  and  structures  we  have  been  considering 
are  but  parts.  To  conceive  of  a  great  nation  as  a 
machine,  operating  on  principles  like  those  which  are 
observed  in  the  operations  of  a  steamship  driven 
through  the  water,  is  no  more  difficult  than  to  con- 
ceive of  a  legislature,  an  army,  or  a  market,  in  the 
same  way.  That  it  does  so  operate  there  is  no  room 
for  the  slightest  doubt.  In  the  major  statement  that 
all  organisms  are  machines,  is  included  the  minor 
statement  that  society  is  a  machine,  and  there  is  no 
more  derogation  of  the  dignity  of  man  in  that  asser- 
tion than  there  is  derogation  of  the  dignity  of  an 
individual  man  in  the  assertion  that  he  masticates, 
digests,  and  assimilates  his  food,  and  propagates  his 
kind,  in  precisely  the  same  manner  as  does  a  gorilla. 
The  gorilla,  himself,  is  not  without  some  measure  of 
dignity  when  he  is  compared  with  the  marmoset,  while 
the  latter  is  a  very  important  creature  when  he  is  set 
over  against  the  rat.  Yet  all  of  these  creatures,  from 
man  to  rat,  are  mammals. 

Let  us  now  consider  society  in  relation  to  its  en- 
vironment. At  the  threshold  of  this  inquiry  we  must 
not  forget  what  has  been  said  of  the  general  structure 
and  function  of  man's  body.  Man's  body  has  been 
well  moulded  to  the  environment  in  which  it  lives,  and 
little  change  is  conceivable  in  that  structure  as  the 
effect  of  any  conceivable  change  in  the  surroundings. 
We  are  at  liberty  to  imagine  some  change  in  structure, 


m  ORGANISM  AND   ENVIRONMENT  III 

and  no  end  of  increased  exercise  of  many  of  the 
structures  already  possessed  by  individuals,  and  from 
these  changes  many  new  characters  may  arise.  These 
will  be  brought  about  by  changes  in  the  environment 
made  inevitable  by  progress ;  but  that  such  changes 
may  produce  a  new  species  of  men  is  impossible  to 
conceive. 

But  this  is  by  no  means  true  of  society.  Social 
changes  are  going  on  with  great  rapidity,  and  have 
been  going  on  since  history  began  to  record  human 
events,  and  for  ages  before  that  time.  If  Plato  and 
Aristotle  were  organically  much  the  same  in  body 
and  mind  as  are  civilized  men  to-day,  the  society  in 
which  these  philosophers  lived  was  a  very  different 
thing  from  the  society  of  the  present  time.  The  prin- 
cipal boast  of  civilization  is  found  in  the  comparison 
made  of  the  present  state  of  society  with  that  of  the 
nations  of  antiquity,  and  with  even  the  state  of  men 
a  few  centuries,  or  a  few  generations  ago.  We  are 
accustomed  with  much  pride  to  point  to  our  grand- 
fathers and  their  institutions  and  to  pity  their  back- 
wardness as  compared  with  our  own  forward  state. 
This  has  been  a  favorite  occupation  with  men  ever 
since  the  "  renaissance  "  of  learning  in  Europe.  And 
if  the  comparison  could  be  made  with  effect  one  or 
two  centuries  ago,  with  what  more  heightened  effect 
may  it  not  be  made  now  ?  For  the  state  of  society  in 
ancient  times  we  can  express  but  a  feeling  of  curiosity 
as  to  how  it  was  possible  for  men  with  such  very 
high  conceptions  to  have  lived  in  such  surroundings 
at  all.  To  ask  wherein  consists  the  difference  be- 
tween the  state  of  the  highest  civilization  in  ancient 
times  and  the  highest  civilization  of  the  present,  is  to 


112  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

suggest  the  entire  history  of  human  progress.  There 
can  be  no  question  that  this  progress  is  a  fact.  Our 
desire  here  is  to  show  its  cause. 

When  we  analytically  compare  the  state  of  Euro- 
pean society  of  say  two  thousand  years  ago  with  that 
of  the  present,  we  find  that  the  differences  are  envi- 
ronmental ;  or,  to  state  the  proposition  more  in  par- 
ticular, that  the  differences  are  environmental  plus  the 
changes  in  the  organism  which  have  accompanied 
such  alterations  in  the  surroundings.  There  should 
be  no  misconception  as  to  what  is  meant  by  the  word 
environment.  Using  the  word  in  its  widest  meaning, 
the  environment  of  man  is  the  entire  universe,  visible 
and  invisible,  except  that  part  of  it  which  consists  of 
man  himself.  This  is  the  only  antJiropocentric  idea 
which  is  perfectly  true.  So  far  as  human  society  is 
concerned,  man  is  truly  the  centre  of  all  things. 

It  is  difficult  to  place  a  limit  upon  the  effects  which 
remotely  distant  bodies  may  have  on  the  lives  of  men 
in  the  most  commonplace  affairs.  For  example,  the 
discovery  that  the  earth  and  the  other  planets  were 
satellites  of  the  sun,  led  to  the  most  important  changes 
in  the  customs  and  laws  of  European  nations; 
changes  which  are  admittedly  the  results  of  the 
intellectual  advancement  of  which  their  discovery  was 
one  efficient  cause.  But  while  it  is  true  that  no  part 
of  the  universe  can  be  omitted  from  a  definition  of 
environment,  that  part  of  it  which  is  nearest  to  man, 
that  is,  the  earth  and  the  material  things  with  which 
man  comes  into  contact,  has  the  most  immediate  and 
far-reaching  effects  upon  the  organism  called  society. 

The  term  environment  does  not  alone  embrace 
the  physiographical  or  geophysical  surroundings  of 


in  ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  113 

society.  These  may  have  undergone  but  slight 
changes  ;  yet  the  environment,  as  a  whole,  may  have 
been  altered  profoundly.  The  physiographical  sur- 
roundings of  Rome  are  very  little  different  from  what 
they  were  in  the  time  of  the  Caesars.  There  are  the 
same  hills,  the  same  river,  the  same  climate,  and,  pos- 
sibly, much  the  same  vegetation  in  the  vicinity  of 
Rome  to-day  as  when  Jupiter  Optimus  was  worshipped 
on  the  Capitoline  Hill.  Many  of  the  ancient  build- 
ings of  the  Romans  still  survive  in  various  states  of 
preservation  and  decay.  Yet  the  environment  of 
Rome  has  been  altered  beyond  the  dreams  of  the 
most  intelligent  of  Roman  citizens  who  lived  in  the 
time  of  the  Caesars. 

Modern  Romans  are  surrounded  by  an  environment 
of  which  the  printing-press  and  its  products,  all  the 
results  flowing  from  the  application  of  steam  power, 
the  electric  telegraph,  and  every  other  concrete 
achievement  of  science,  form  a  part.  If  modern 
Romans  are  incapable  of  enjoying  the  atrocious  sports 
of  the  Flavian  amphitheatre,  —  the  mighty  structure 
of  which  still  stands  to  remind  them  of  the  social 
state  of  their  predecessors,  —  it  is  only  because  their 
environment  has  so  changed  as  to  make  such  prac- 
tices impossible.  In  that  same  Rome,  but  four  cen- 
turies ago,  Giordano  Bruno  was  publicly  burned  for 
assailing  the  dogmas  of  the  Roman  Church.  Bruno 
could  not  be  burned  to-day  because  the  environment 
of  Europe,  —  the  innumerable  discoveries  and  inven- 
tions of  science,  —  has  so  altered  the  ideas  of  men 
that  they  are  taught  from  their  childhood  to  look 
with  horror  upon  the  cruelties  of  their  ancestors. 
Bruno's  fellow-men,  or  the  majority  of  them,  were 
i 


114  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

more  deeply  shocked  by  Bruno's  doctrines  than  they 
were  by  the  manner  of  the  death  of  that  philosopher. 
They  were  shocked  by  the  doctrines  of  Galilei,  who, 
if  he  did  not  suffer  Bruno's  fate,  was  nevertheless 
severely  punished  for  the  publication  of  discoveries 
to  be  ignorant  of  which  is  to-day  a  matter  for  com- 
miseration. 

All  of  this  is  easily  understood  when  we  remember 
that  the  Rome  of  the  Sixteenth  Century  reflected,  in 
its  religious,  moral,  and  political  state,  the  state  of 
the  environment  by  which  it  was  hedged.  Since 
that  time  the  railroad  and  the  telegraph  have  bound 
the  countries  of  Europe  together  in  closest  contact ; 
observatories  have  been  built  from  which  are  seen 
the  movements  of  distant  suns;  microscopes  and 
spectroscopes  have  separated  the  tissues  of  living 
animals  and  resolved  the  constituents  of  the  stars  ; 
printing-presses  have  placed  in  the  hands  of  children 
books  which  tell  the  story  of  Galilei  and  his  inven- 
tions ;  ecclesiastical  authority  has  been  divorced  from 
political  authority,  and  government  now  encourages 
such  discoveries  as  Galilei  made  and  Bruno  espoused. 
But  government  had  been  hardly  able  to  do  this  had 
it  not  been  for  railroads  and  telegraphs,  telescopes 
and  microscopes,  printing-presses  and  spectroscopes 
—  and  these  things  are  environment. 

In  speaking  of  environment,  therefore,  while  we 
need  not  leave  out  of  account  even  the  most  distant 
bodies  in  space,  we  must  necessarily  attach  the  larg- 
est share  of  importance  to  those  things  which  are 
intimately  associated,  in  their  spatial  relations,  with 
man  and  his  economy.  The  sun  and  the  stars  are  of 
course  important  enough,  and  even  the  moon  has  no 


in  ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  115 

inconsiderable  effect  upon  the  activities  of  shipping. 
The  alterations  in  human  conduct  flowing  from  alter- 
ations in  men's  moral  nature  made  by  the  study  of 
astronomy,  are  far  more  general  than  a  superficial 
glance  would  seem  to  indicate.  But,  as  we  have  seen 
in  the  preceding  chapter,  the  study  of  astronomy  is  a 
derivation  from  the  economic  activities  of  men  ;  and 
it  is  to  be  inferred  that  causes  which  shall  account 
for  fundamental  changes  in  environment  shall  be 
inclusive  of  causes  which  account  for  environment  in 
other  aspects.  To  state  the  proposition  in  another 
form,  we  may  say  that  intellectual  environment  arises 
out  of  economic  environment,  precisely  as  intellectual 
activity  arises  from  economic  activity.  At  the  very 
time  when  the  great  Republic  of  Venice  was  laying  the 
foundations  of  the  modern  banking  system,  and  devel- 
oping the  mechanism  of  financial  exchange,  Galilei 
was  building  his  telescopes  and  discovering  spots  on 
the  sun. 

With  this  definitive  understanding  of  the  meaning  in 
which  we  use  the  word  environment,  we  will  proceed 
to  examine  the  manner  in  which  society  has  been 
changed  by  the  forces  of  environment,  and  how  it 
has  been  slowly  fashioned  from  crude  beginnings 
into  the  form  in  which  we  see  it  now.  To  this  end 
we  will  presume  that  the  reader  is  familiar  with  the 
results  which  have  been  achieved  by  the  science  of 
anthropology.  The  inquiry  will  carry  us  somewhat 
farther  back  than  the  nations  of  antiquity  with  which 
we  have  been  made  familiar  by  researches  in  history, 
in  philology,  and  in  archaeology.  We  will  find  that 
comparative  law  will  aid  us  largely  to  understand 
much  of  the  variation  through  which  society  has  sue- 


Il6  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

cessively  passed ;  and  to  indicate  that  the  causes  of 
the  variation  are  found  in  successive  new  environ- 
ments. 

As  we  are  dealing  with  man  as  a  social  animal 
only,  we  can  dismiss  discussion  as  to  the  origin  of  his 
characters  in  this  respect.  The  long  time  required  to 
prepare  the  human  individual  for  a  freely  moving, 
independent  life,  in  which  he  can  in  turn  propagate 
the  kind,  necessitates  the  existence  of  the  family.  In 
remote  ages  parents  educated  their  adult  children  to 
remain  associated  with  the  family  group,  and  from 
the  family  group  rapidly  evolved  the  tribe.  If,  now, 
we  wish  to  ascertain  how  the  ancestors  of  the  highly 
civilized  nations  of  Europe  lived  in  times  which  ante- 
date history,  and  which  transcend  the  power  of 
philology  and  archaeology,  we  have  only  to  look 
about  us  and  observe  how  savage  peoples  live  to-day. 
By  this  method  we  can  approach  the  neolithic  ances- 
tor of  Europe  in  his  cave,  and  learn  much  about  the 
habits  of  the  life  of  even  his  ancestor.  But  one  more 
step  is  required  to  conduct  us  into  the  presence  of 
that  extremely  savage  man  whom  a  little  experience 
had  taught  the  few  highly  valuable  lessons  which 
made  him  master  of  his  fellow-creatures,  and  which 
have  led  his  children,  by  slow  and  painful  steps,  up 
to  the  very  high  state  in  which  we  find  them  now. 

In  the  life  of  any  single  organism,  the  struggle  for 
food  is  made  difficult  or  easy  by  its  environment 
alone.  If  food  exist"  in  plenty  and  is  easily  accessible, 
the  struggle  is  minimized,  or  vanishes  altogether,  and 
the  efforts  to  secure  nutritive  substances  become 
positively  pleasurable.  If  the  food  be  scarce,  or  less 
easy  of  access,  the  struggle  is  sharpened,  although  it 


in  ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  1 1/ 

may  still  retain  many  pleasurable  elements.  As  the 
sources  of  supply  approach  inaccessibility,  the  struggle 
becomes  painful ;  and  when  food  can  no  longer  be 
found,  or  when  it  remains  inaccessible,  the  organism 
must  die,  or  remove  itself  to  a  new  environment  from 
which  one  or  the  other  of  these  circumstances  is 
absent.  The  environment  of  the  individual  organism, 
in  what  is  called  a  "state  of  nature,"  consists  not 
only  of  the  plants  and  animals  from  which  the  organ- 
ism obtains  its  food,  but  of  the  other  individual 
organisms  of  the  race  to  which  it  belongs.  The 
environment  of  the  separate  groups  of  a  race  consists 
of  all  the  surroundings  (including  other  groups)  which 
have  a  bearing  upon  the  quantity  and  kind  of  food 
accessible  to  the  common  effort. 

The  occupation  by  which  men  living  in  communi- 
ties, or  tribes,  secured  their  food,  in  primitive  times, 
was  that  of  hunting.  Previously  to  the  hunting  stage 
it  is  probable  that  man  lived  upon  vegetable  food 
which  was  obtained  from  plants  growing  in  abundance 
about  him.  With  the  discovery  of  fire  came  the 
knowledge  that  the  flesh  of  other  animals,  when 
treated  with  fire,  served  as  palatable  and  nutritious 
food,  and  thus  the  way  was  opened  to  a  greater 
variety  and  larger  quantity  of  available  nutriment. 
Hunting,  then,  soon  became  the  principal  method  by 
which  the  tribe  supplied  itself  with  the  means  of 
sustentation.  The  discovery  of  fire  worked  a  most 
important  change  in  environment,  and  from  it  flowed 
numerous  new  alterations,  not  the  least  of  which  was 
the  improvement  which  must  have  inevitably  followed 
in  the  implements  which  men  used  for  battling  with 
their  enemies. 


1 1 8  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

Whether  or  not  the  use  of  clubs  for  this  purpose 
preceded  or  followed  the  discovery  of  fire,  is  quite 
indifferent.  But  that  discovery  must  unquestionably 
have  spurred  invention  to  the  creation  of  more  efficient 
means  of  killing,  not  only  natural  enemies,  but  such 
animals,  as  well,  as  could  serve  for  food.  From 
utility  as  means  of  protection,  or  the  passive  preserva- 
tion of  life,  to  utility  as  means  of  actively  securing 
sustentation,  the  change  in  the  value  of  such  imple- 
ments was  of  the  highest  importance. 

But  the  possession  of  fire  gave  man  a  double 
advantage  over  all  other  animals  in  the  struggle  for 
existence.  Fire  and  the  knowledge  of  its  production 
is  one  of  the  oldest  arts  of  men.  No  race  has  as  yet 
been  found  which  could  not  produce  fire.  The 
methods  of  its  production  differ  but  slightly  in  the 
most  widely  separated  races,  from  the  Eskimo  to  the 
African.  The  customs  and  superstitions  pertaining 
to  fire  are  among  the  most  important  in  the  religious 
practices  and  beliefs  of  all  savage  and  of  many  semi- 
civilized  races.  The  remains  of  these  beliefs  are  seen 
in  the  most  highly  civilized  peoples  of  the  present 
time,  where  the  word  "  hearthstone "  connotes  all 
that  is  held  sacred  in  family  associations. 

It  was  found  (i)that  flame,  which  attached  to  itself 
an  idea  of  the  most  intensely  painful  heat,  not  only 
served  to  render  grateful  the  flesh  of  animals  when 
dead,  but  to  hold  them  at  a  safe  distance  when  living ; 
and  (2)  that,  by  means  of  fire,  men  were  enabled  to 
remove  from  one  environment  to  another  with  a 
freedom  not  possessed  before.  With  these  important 
additions  to  their  power  over  the  environment,  the 
range  of  tribes  became  practically  unlimited.  A  tribe 


Hi  ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  119 

whose  supply  of  food  was  limited  to  the  bounty  of 
the  vegetable  world  about  it  would,  it  is  easy  to  con- 
ceive, be  restricted  to  the  localities  in  which  the 
natural  products  of  the  soil  were  capable  of  yielding 
enough  to  sustain  life.  As  soon  as  the  tribe  would 
acquire  the  use  of  fire,  and  of  improved  methods  of 
hunting,  by  which  the  number  of  animals  accessible 
for  food  would  be  enlarged,  the  mobility  of  the  tribe 
would,  as  a  consequence,  increase,  and  the  range  of 
the  tribe  would  extend.  A  knowledge  of  fire,  and 
the  invention  of  efficient  hunting  implements,  could 
thus  be  conceived  to  change  a  race  from  one  living  in 
a  tropical  jungle  to  one  inhabiting  a  country  with  an 
arctic  climate. 

These  two  inventions,  which  thus  gave  to  man  a 
twofold  advantage  over  other  creatures,  produced  a 
twofold  effect  upon  the  societies  which  possessed 
them.  They  not  only  caused  communities  to  remain 
for  a  longer  time  in  restricted  environments,  but  they 
forced  groups  to  separate  from  parent  communities, 
and  temporarily  to  establish  themselves  in  localities 
far  distant  from  that  of  their  source.  The  tent  had 
already  arisen  from  the  simple  discovery  that  the 
skin  of  an  animal,  spread  out  upon  poles,  served  as  a 
useful  shelter  from  the  rain.  And  the  hut  had  al- 
ready developed  from  the  screen,  formed  of  branches 
fixed  in  the  ground,  as  yet  observed  among  Austra- 
lians ;  or  of  large  leaves  arranged  against  a  network 
of  sticks,  as  found  among  the  Indians  of  Brazil  and 
among  the  Singhalese  Veddahs.  Thus  infixed  habi- 
tation, and  the  movable  habitation,  accommodated 
themselves  to  the  needs  of  tribes  when  the  discovery 
of  fire  and  improvements  in  implements  of  the  hunt 


I2O  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

left  man  free  to  wander  abroad,  or  to  remain  for  a 
longer  time  in  a  favorable  locality. 

These  two  forces  lifted  man  immeasurably  above 
his  fellow-creatures  only  because  they  enabled  him 
to  change  his  environment.  From  that  power  accrued 
to  man  that  unconquerable  superiority  which  left 
almost  all  his  enemies  helpless  before  him.  It  was 
not  to  the  fact  that  man  possessed  hands  that  he 
owed  his  mastery.  It  was  because  he  used  those 
hands  to  make  an  alteration  in  his  environment. 
Once  that  this  change  was  wrought,  it  was  inevitable 
that  all  animals  which  could  not,  or  which  did  not, 
effect  a  similar  change,  should  fall  in  the  conflict. 
The  gorilla  and  the  chimpanzee  possess  hands  cap- 
able of  doing  much  that  is  done  by  many  races  of 
men  of  the  present  time.  Yet  the  gorilla  does  not 
make  use  of  his  hands  as  do  men.  It  is  true  that 
the  gorilla  has  not  the  intelligence  of  man.  But  it  is 
not  altogether  a  matter  of  intelligence.  The  gorilla 
uses  his  hands  to  some  purpose  when  fighting  his 
enemies,  and  if  man  is  stronger  than  the  gorilla,  it  is 
because  man  has  been  able  so  to  change  his  environ- 
ment as  to  place  at  his  disposal  instruments  which 
the  gorilla  is  not  able  to  match  with  corresponding 
changes  in  his.  Men,  native  to  the  locality  in  which 
the  gorilla  abides,  fear  that  creature  almost  as  much 
as  he  fears  them. 

But  if  we  leave  the  gorilla  out  of  the  discussion, 
and  confine  ourselves  to  the  human  race  itself,  we 
find  that  there  is  as  much  difference  in  the  strength 
of  the  most  savage  man  and  the  most  civilized  as 
there  is  between  the  savage  and  the  beast  strongest 
beneath  him.  Why  ?  Because  the  civilized  man  has 


ill  ORGANISM    AND   ENVIRONMENT  121 

created  an  environment  about  him  incalculably  more 
complex  than  that  of  his  ruder  fellow.  If  the  matter 
is  to  hinge  upon  the  intellect,  let  us  admit  that  all 
men  are  equal  in  that  respect.  Let  us  admit,  for 
example,  that  American  Indians,  or  the  Chinese, 
have,  as  a  race,  as  much  intellect  as  European  races. 
Why,  then,  are  not  the  Chinese  as  strong  as  the 
nations  of  Europe  ?  Why  are  American  Indians 
the  mere  wards  of  European  races  in  America  ?  Be- 
cause the  environment  of  the  Chinese  has  not  been 
sensibly  altered  in  two  thousand  years  or  more ; 
whereas  that  of  Europeans  has  been  altered  almost 
beyond  conception.  And  it  might  be  contended  that 
American  Indians  are  prevented  from  acquiring  the 
environment  of  their  masters  by  the  force  of  that 
environment  itself  added  to  superiority  in  numbers. 

But  it  must  not  be  inferred  that  we  hold  that  all 
human  races  are  equal  in  intellect.  There  is  excel- 
lent reason  for  believing  that  the  very  contrary  is  the 
truth.  We  may  be  unable  positively  to  say  whether 
natural  selection  has  developed  more  complex  brains 
in  Europeans  than  in  Kaffirs  by  the  method  sug- 
gested by  Darwin  or  by  the  method  suggested  by 
Weismann.  But  that  Kaffirs  will  ever  develop  a 
civilization  like  that  of  England  or  America  we  can 
well  doubt,  —  doubt  as  well  as  that  the  gorilla  will 
ever  acquire  the  power  of  developing  the  strength 
of  a  savage  race  of  men. 

We  may  not  be  capable  of  saying  whether  it  was 
increased  intellect  which  followed  upon  enlarged  en- 
vironment, or  enlarged  environment  upon  increased 
intellect.  But  until  some  one  proves  the  contrary, 
the  presumption  that  environmental  change  is  fol- 


122  THE   LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

lowed  by  intellectual  change  must  have  the  weightier 
value.  It  may  be  true  that  difference  in  the  quantity 
of  intellect  possessed  by  different  races  is  due  to 
divergence,  from  whatever  cause,  springing  up  in 
common  ancestors  at  a  time  when  the  pithecanthro- 
pus was  changing  into  man ;  or  it  may  be  that  very 
widely  divergent  races  of  men  have  sprung  from 
different  pithecanthropi  simultaneously  developed 
from  lower  forms.  Whichever  of  these  two  theories 
be  true,  there  can  be  but  little  doubt  that  the  quan- 
tity of  intellect  possessed  by  races  is  measurably 
different. 

It  may  be  held  that  from  savages  who  cannot  now 
count  above  five  might  be  bred  a  brain  which,  after 
one  hundred  generations,  would  be  equal  to  that  of  a 
Leverrier.  And  it  may  be  held  that  mere  changes 
in  the  environment  could  achieve  this  result.  But  it 
is  more  highly  probable  that  the  brain  of  savage  men 
long  ago  reached  that  balance  with  environment 
which  renders  new  adjustments  impossible,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  gorilla,  the  elephant,  and  the  dog. 

Whether  acquired  characters  be  transmitted  or  not, 
we  know  that  the  possession  of  certain  acquired 
characters  is  the  all-important  force  in  the  civilizing 
process.  The  intellect  of  the  Chinese  and  that  of 
Europeans  of  three  hundred  centuries  ago  may  have 
been  the  same  and  it  may  be  the  same  now.  The 
difference  then  may  have  been  one  of  environment 
only,  and  that  may  be  the  only  difference  between 
the  two  races  at  the  present  time.  But  if  this  be 
true,  then  environment  is  the  all-essential  thing. 
The  European  can  never  be  displaced  by  the  Chinese 
until  the  Chinese  acquires  an  environment  superior 


in  ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  123 

to  that  of  the  European,  and  then  the  Chinese  will 
be  the  stronger  race  just  as  it  was  three  thousand 
years  ago.  We  shall  discuss  this  question  in  another 
place,  where  we  hope  to  show  that  the  influence  of 
environment,  through  natural  selection,  is  actually 
changing  the  size  and  complexity  of  man's  brain,  as 
it  has  done  in  the  past.  And  while  this  may  seem  to 
be  a  surrender  to  the  theory  of  Weismann,  it  will  in 
no  wise  lessen  the  force  of  our  position  that  acquired 
characters  are  all  important,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
parasitic  crabs. 


CHAPTER    IV 

ORGANISM    AND    ENVIRONMENT    CONTINUED 

A  CASUAL  glance  at  the  law  of  natural  selection  at 
once  reveals  to  us  the  simplicity  of  the  process. 
Natural  selection  is  nothing  more  than  the  weeding 
out  of  organisms  not  in  harmony  with  the  environ- 
ment. In  its  broadest  aspect  the  law  can  be  under- 
stood by  a  child.  Organisms  are  destroyed  by  two 
forces :  first,  by  the  character  of  the  environment 
itself ;  secondly,  by  other  organisms  which  use  their 
weaker  fellows  for  food.  The  first  process  is  a  pas- 
sive struggle  for  existence ;  the  second  is  an  active 
struggle. 

In  the  passive  struggle  the  environment  alone  does 
the  weeding  out.  Let  us  illustrate  this  fact  by  a 
simple  example :  Let  us  fancy  a  race  of  sparrows 
living  in  a  locality  where  food  is  plentiful  and  easy 
of  access.  The  sparrows  will  vary  from  one  another, 
let  us  say,  in  the  length  of  their  beaks.  The  beaks 
of  some  will  be  longer  than  those  of  others.  But  as 
long  as  length  of  the  beak  gives  no  advantage  in 
securing  food,  the  long-  and  the  short-beaked  spar- 
rows will  thrive  equally  well,  and  the  average  length 
of  the  beak  in  the  whole  race  will  remain  the  same. 
Let  us  now  suppose  that  a  change  comes  over  the 
environment,  or  that  the  sparrows  be  removed  to  a 

124 


CHAP,  iv  ORGANISM  AND  ENVIRONMENT  CONTINUED   125 

locality  where  food,  although  plentiful  enough,  is  no 
longer  accessible  to  birds  with  shorter  beaks.  It  is 
clear  that  the  latter,  being  unable  to  secure  food,  will 
rapidly  die  out,  and  the  sparrows  with  the  longer 
beaks  will  survive  and  propagate.  The  environment 
here  simply  weeds  out  the  organisms  out  of  harmony 
with  the  surroundings. 

In  this  fanciful  illustration  we  see  at  work  the  two 
great  factors  of  natural  selection.  The  survival  of 
the  bird  with  the  longer  beak  depends  upon  two 
things :  first,  the  character  of  the  beak  itself ;  and, 
secondly,  the  character  of  the  environment.  Each  is 
equally  important.  We  cannot  neglect  the  one  or 
the  other  in  our  conception  of  natural  selection.  We 
must  take  account  of  both,  and  we  must  do  more 
than  this;  we  must  regard  them  as  united  together 
in  a  single  process  —  the  functioning  of  an  organism 
in  the  surroundings  from  which  it  draws  its  nutri- 
ment. Natural  selection  is,  therefore,  a  process 
having  a  twofold  aspect,  one  part  of  which  pertains 
to  the  organism,  and  the  other  to  the  environment. 
This  process,  acting  through  countless  ages,  has  pro- 
duced all  the  varied  forms  of  life  which  fill  the  world. 

The  character  of  the  environment  is  hence  seen  to 
be  an  all-essential  factor  in  the  development  of  organic 
life.  This  fact  alone  should  force  upon  us  the  con- 
clusion that  the  same  truth  is  applicable  to  every 
form  of  social  life  as  well.  The  conclusion,  upon 
first  thought,  may  not  be  forcibly  apparent,  but  it 
will  become  so  the  moment  we  look  at  the  various 
nations  of  men  inhabiting  the  earth,  and  note  the 
important  part  played  by  their  environments  in  the 
development  of  their  national  life.  We  have  seen,  as 


126  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

in  the  case  of  the  reindeer,  that  a  race  of  animals  can 
work  material  changes  in  the  environment,  and  that 
by  doing  this  they  can  manage  to  survive  ;  while  other 
similar  races,  without  this  power,  will  be  eliminated. 

Now,  the  simple  truth  about  human  society  is  this 
—  that  man  has  been  able  to  work  inconceivably 
vast  changes  in  the  natural  things  around  him  — 
greater  and  more  varied  changes  than  any  other 
animal  known  —  and  it  is  to  this  fact  are  due  his 
very  great  supremacy  and  the  peculiar  quality  of  his 
social  state.  But  why  has  he  been  able  to  accom- 
plish these  extraordinary  changes  ?  How  has  he 
managed  to  upbuild  so  high  a  civilization,  and  to 
accumulate  so  vast  a  quantity  and  so  many  and  such 
varied  forms  of  wealth  ?  to  become  so  strong  as  to 
make  the  animals  next  to  him  in  the  scale  of  life 
mere  instruments  of  his  will  and  pleasure  ?  There 
must  be  some  principle  here  which,  it  is  evident,  is 
an  all-essential  fact  of  social  science.  What  is  it  ? 

We  have  the  highest  warrant  for  searching  for  the 
cause  of  man's  power  in  the  part  his  environment 
has  played  in  the  history  of  the  human  race.  If  the 
character  of  the  environment  has  been  found  sufficient 
to  develop  all  living  forms  from  a  comparatively  few 
ancestors,  are  we  not  warranted  in  the  assumption 
that  man's  greater  growth  has  been  determined  by 
the  same  cause  ?  And  if  this  be  the  truth  where  are 
we  to  look  for  the  causes  of  social  growth  save  in  the 
character  of  the  environment  hedging  in  the  races, 
the  nations,  and  the  groups  of  men  of  which  humanity 
consists  ?  We  shall  greatly  facilitate  matters  if  we 
leave  the  rest  of  sentient  creation  out  of  account,  for 
the  present,  and  give  our  attention  to  man  alone. 


iv         ORGANISM  AND   ENVIRONMENT  CONTINUED      I2/ 

Looking  broadly  at  humanity,  we  find  what  are 
called  civilized  men,  and  men  who  are  not  civilized. 
Some  human  groups,  bound  together  by  tribal  con- 
nections, wander  over  the  earth  without  any  fixed 
place  of  habitation ;  others  live  for  centuries  in  one 
unchanging  locality,  accumulating  wealth  and  ac- 
quiring power  over  their  fellow-men,  just  as  man 
himself  masters  his  fellow-creatures,  the  beasts.  The 
civilized  groups  are  always  found  living  for  an  in- 
definite time  upon  much  the  same  spot,  and  from 
this  fixed  seat  they  extend  their  empire  over  other 
groups  far  remote  from  the  central  place  of  power. 
We  can  well  imagine  that  at  some  far  distant  time,  in 
the  early  days  of  man  upon  the  earth,  human  society 
consisted  of  nothing  more  than  a  large  number  of 
wandering  tribes,  engaged  in  a  migrating  way  of  life, 
and  in  chronic  warfare  with  one  another.  But  the 
time  came  when  this  kind  of  existence  ceased  ;  when 
some  of  the  nomads  left  off  wandering  and  settled 
down  to  a  continuous  life  of  industry  in  one  unchang- 
ing place.  How  was  this  peculiar  state  produced  ? 
What  forced  the  nomads  to  stop  migration  and  con- 
fine themselves  to  one  locality,  thereby  gaining  an 
immense  advantage  over  the  other  nomads  who  did 
not,  or  who  could  not,  practise  the  new  mode  of 
social  existence  ?  It  is  evident  that  the  true  answer 
to  this  question  will  give  us  the  key  to  the  entire 
history  of  human  civilization  and  will  account,  in 
large  measure,  for  the  different  forms  of  social  life 
existing  side  by  side  to-day,  or  separated  from  one 
another  by  vast  distances  in  place  and  in  time,  in 
character  and  in  power. 

The  discovery  of  fire  was  an  important  change  in 


128  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

the  relation  of  man  to  his  surroundings.  It  enabled 
him  to  wander  at  will,  safe  and  free,  over  the  surface 
of  the  earth.  It  wrought  an  improvement  in  his 
implements  of  the  hunt,  and  also  in  his  imple- 
ments of  war.  It  served  him  as  a  means  of 
making  more  palatable  his  food  and  of  keeping 
dangerous  enemies  at  a  distance.  But  the  use  of 
fire  could  never  have  forced  men  to  live  together  in 
a  permanently  fixed  place,  had  there  not  been  made 
another  discovery  lying  at  the  base  of  the  entire 
structure  of  civilization.  This  discovery  was  only 
the  perception  that  a  new  use  could  be  made  of 
objects  which  had  previously  been  used  for  purposes 
of  food  alone.  Men  discovered  that  they  could  so 
change  the  environment  as  to  leave  them  independent 
of  the  merely  natural  supply  of  food. 

It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  importance  of 
this  principle  in  every  question  of  human  society, 
together  with  its  laws,  its  purposes,  and  its  develop- 
ment. We  shall  see  how  from  the  forces  released 
by  that  ancient  discovery  has  arisen  every  civilization 
within  the  scope  of  human  observation ;  how  the 
permanence  of  existing  civilizations  depends  upon  the 
play  of  these  very  forces  ;  and  how  social  progress, 
not  only  of  the  past  but  of  the  future,  must  be 
reckoned  in  the  light  of  this  principle  if  they  are 
to  be  understandingly  considered  at  all. 

The  discovery  lay  in  the  perception  of  the  fact  that 
animals  and  vegetables  could  be  made  to  reproduce 
themselves  under  the  control  of  man.  Previously  to 
that  time  it  was  not  possible  for  men  to  abide  in  a 
permanent  place  of  residence.  When  the  natural 
supply  of  food  ran  short,  they  were  compelled  to 


iv         ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT   CONTINUED      I2Q 

move  to  a  new  locality  ;  were  forced  to  search  for 
fresh  fields  where  the  bounty  of  nature  would  give 
them  the  means  of  existence ;  where  the  predacity 
of  man  had  not  killed  off  the  animals  whose  flesh 
would  serve  as  nourishment.  But  these  frequent 
changes  of  place  were  obviated  when  men  discov- 
ered that  cultivation  of  the  soil  and  the  breeding  of 
captive  animals  would  replace  the  old  methods  of 
dependence  upon  nature  and  the  hunt.  Thus  arose 
the  industry  of  agriculture,  an  industry  of  a  twofold 
character,  involving  the  regulated  reproduction  of 
vegetable  and  animal  life  for  purposes  of  subsistence. 

One  or  the  other  of  these  two  phases  of  agriculture 
may  have  been  discovered  first :  cultivation  of  the 
soil  by  the  hoe  method  probably  preceded  the  be- 
ginnings of  pastoral  industry ;  and  true  agriculture 
did  not  arise  until  long  after  the  herding  of  animals 
and  the  use  of  the  hoe  had  become  established  cus- 
toms. When  men  found  that  animals,  pastorally 
bred,  could  be  used  for  cultivation  of  the  soil,  the  hoe 
method  was  largely  displaced  by  the  plough  method, 
and  true  agriculture  arose  into  the  system  obtaining 
down  to  the  present  time. 

The  tremendous  import  of  the  discovery  of  agri- 
culture has  not  been  recognized  by  writers  upon 
social  science.  While  the  broad  fact  itself  has  been 
the  subject  of  much  comment,  its  true  relations  to 
the  history  of  mankind  have  not  been  fully  perceived. 
It  is  a  fact  which,  as  we  have  said,  lies  at  the  bottom 
of  civilization ;  for  without  it  there  could  have  been 
no  diverging  growth  of  nations,  no  rapid  increase  of 
wealth,  no  development  of  intellect,  invention,  or 
art,  and  none  of  that  moral  growth  which  marks 


130  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

off  the  civilized  man  from  the  savage,  leaving  one 
or  a  few  races,  or  nations,  to  be  the  masters  of  the 
earth  and  its  empire.  This  is  the  new  principle  of 
social  science  we  desire  to  develop  here,  and  we  hope 
that  the  reader  will  make  a  special  note  of  it,  for 
it  underlies  everything  that  is  to  follow  in  the 
succeeding  pages. 

Our  new  principle  may  be  stated  as  follows  :  Social 
progress  depends  upon  the  multiplication  of  wealth 
while  the  society  inhabits  an  unchanging  locality. 
The  tribe  which  ranges  over  the  earth  can  never 
produce  a  civilization  for  the  reason  that  civilization 
itself  depends  upon  the  quantity  and  the  kind  of 
wealth  possessed  by  men.  But  once  that  a  wander- 
ing tribe  perceives  that  it  can  increase  its  wealth  by 
the  practice  of  agriculture,  civilization  of  some  kind, 
together  with  a  corresponding  acquisition  of  power, 
must  follow  inevitably.  Let  us  develop  this  idea 
somewhat  in  detail. 

A  nomad  tribe,  struck  by  the  ease  with  which 
wealth  may  be  won  by  agriculture,  would  tend  to  re- 
main in  a  fixed  locality.  In  doing  this,  it  would  find 
that  it  could  not  only  work  a  great  improvement  in 
its  implements  of  war,  but  could  also  build  superior 
and  permanent  fortifications  invulnerable  to  attack 
from  the  weaker  tribes  near  by.  But  from  this  quick 
increase  in  wealth  would  flow  a  corresponding  expan- 
sion of  ideas  of  every  kind.  Wealth  would  not  only 
multiply,  but  property  rights  would  become  more 
complex  and  more  numerous.  New  objects  of  prop- 
erty would  constantly  arise.  Land  would  assume  an 
importance  it  never  had  had  before.  The  rights  of 
men  to  many  kinds  of  wealth  would  be  in  constant 


iv         ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  CONTINUED      131 

dispute,  and  government  would  be  necessary  to  reg- 
ulate the  internal  life  of  the  community.  Govern- 
ment, too,  would  flow  from  the  need  of  the  group  to 
protect  itself  against  external  enemies,  and  in  this 
way  would  arise  an  instrument  of  force,  or  a  righting 
machine,  to  be  used  for  external  defence  and  internal 
peace. 

The  power  possessed  by  a  community  of  this  kind 
would  draw  into  it  communities  hard  by,  either  by 
natural  fusion  or  by  conquest,  and  this  growth  would 
profoundly  alter  and  expand  every  institution,  the 
germ  of  which  existed  in  the  former  nomad  state. 
Mere  strength  or  cunning  in  the  hunt,  or  in  war,  lost 
much  of  its  prestige  when  wealth  was  found  to  be 
convertible  into  power.  A  chief's  possessions  under 
the  old  system  were  the  fruits  of  his  strength ; 
whereas  under  the  new  system,  wealth  might  enable 
its  possessor,  reinforced  as  he  would  be  by  common 
interest  and  incentive,  to  outweigh  with  it  the  impor- 
tance of  mere  bodily  strength.  Strength,  when 
matched  against  external  enemies,  would  still  find  its 
reward  in  riches,  and  the  strongest  man  might  still  be 
the  richest ;  but  pure  bodily  strength  would  have 
lost  much  of  its  influence. 

Institutions  of  caste  in  the  surmounted  system 
would  develop  rapidly  with  the  new  economic  growth, 
and  with  the  stability  of  property  flowing  from  the 
changed  environment.  Nobility  of  a  new  kind, 
based  upon  quantity  of  wealth  possessed  by  individ- 
uals, would  emerge  from  the  new  social  order.  But 
one  of  the  most  important  developments,  following 
upon  permanence  of  locality,  would  be  the  establish- 
ment of  human  slavery.  If  slavery  existed  previously 


132  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

to  the  new  order,  it  would  be  now  enormously  enlarged, 
and  would  pass  through  an  involution  of  a  very  com- 
plex nature.  The  superior  strength  of  fixed  communi- 
ties, venting  itself  in  conquest  of  contiguous  social 
groups,  would  now  find  a  use  for  captives  of  war 
which  could  hardly  have  existed  in  the  older  and  sim- 
pler stage.  Man  could  now  utilize  in  a  most  profita- 
ble manner  the  labor  of  other  men  in  agriculture  and 
in  the  arts  which  had  grown  up  beside  and  from  it. 
The  use  of  animals  for  agricultural  purposes  was 
enlarged  by  the  use  of  men  in  the  same  way.  Human 
beings  passed  into  the  category  of  wealth,  and  were 
made  objects  of  property  rights.  The  nature  of  human 
slavery  must  be  understood  if  we  are  to  compre- 
hend the  effects  which  followed  its  establishment, 
or  its  very  large  extension  and  involution,  after  the 
acquirement  of  man's  second  great  power  over  his 
environment. 

How  well  that  institution  served  the  economic  and 
the  moral  wants  of  society  is  readily  seen  when  we 
consider  these  two  phases  of  social  growth  histor- 
ically. By  using  slave  labor  to  produce  most  if  not 
all  of  the  common  food,  the  primitive  society  was  left 
free  to  develop  that  strength  which,  in  early  times, 
was  most  needful  for  the  preservation  of  social  integ- 
rity. This  strength  was  found  in  the  art  of  war. 
Before  the  development  of  international  trade,  and 
even  long  after  it,  war  was  the  principal  method 
whereby  a  community  most  easily,  and  hence  most 
naturally,  acquired  new  wealth  and  empire.  The 
more  efficient  the  slave  labor  at  home,  the  more  im- 
portant would  be  the  influence  of  the  social  group 
abroad.  The  military  caste  would,  therefore,  become 


iv         ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  CONTINUED      133 

the  most  powerful  in  any  successful  group ;  and  it 
was  the  slave  caste  which  made  the  fighting  caste 
possible,  at  least  in  its  most  efficient  form.  The  polit- 
ical activities  of  prosperous  nations  would  be  almost 
entirely  military.  The  army,  serving  as  an  instru- 
ment to  enlarge  the  sphere  of  the  nation  abroad, 
would  serve  also  to  maintain  the  state  of  slavery  at 
home.  Between  the  extremes  of  slave  and  king 
would  lie  all  the  castes  developed  under  the  play  of 
the  forces  aroused  by  the  creation,  distribution,  and 
conservation  of  wealth  made  possible  by  the  residen- 
tial permanence  of  the  environment.  So  natural  and 
necessary  was  the  institution  of  slavery  that  a  con- 
ception of  a  nation  without  it  was  repugnant  to  the 
minds  of  most  men.  This  was  true,  because  slavery 
was  an  economic  causa  sine  qua  non  of  national  power 
abroad,  and  hence  of  national  integrity  at  home. 

But  the  conceptions  of  men  were  slowly  changed 
by  new  changes  in  the  environment  striking  down 
the  importance  of  the  military  caste.  War  was  largely 
displaced  by  trade  as  a  means  of  securing  empire  and 
wealth.  Nations  tending  to  develop  internal  industry 
were  found  to  be  the  most  prosperous.  Commerce 
was  discovered  to  be  a  more  certain  and  less  painful 
method  of  obtaining  wealth  than  could  be  found  in 
war.  Warlike  nations  were  forced  to  treat  with  com- 
mercial nations.  Ruthlessly  to  destroy  and  enslave 
an  industrious  and  commercial,  if  peaceful,  people, 
was  found  to  react  with  disastrous  effect  upon  the 
conquering  militant  race.  War  became  useful  chiefly 
as  a  means  of  enlarging  trade.  Conceptions  of  right 
and  wrong,  justifying  war,  were  modified,  and  ulti- 
mately changed  into  conceptions  of  the  very  reverse 


134  THE  LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

character.  The  army  then  became  an  instrument  in 
the  defence  of  commerce  or  in  its  extension. 

Environments  developed  in  this  way  profoundly 
changed  the  opinions  of  men  as  to  the  prime  impor- 
tance of  the  military  caste.  Moral  conceptions,  rear- 
ranging themselves  about  this  new  centre,  naturally 
condemned  a  system  found  to  be  detrimental  to  pros- 
perity, and  the  institution  of  slavery  began  to  fall  to 
pieces.  Its  remains,  as  found  in  the  feudal  system 
of  Europe  during  the  middle  ages,  slowly  disinte- 
grated after  the  discovery  was  made  that  free  labor 
was  always  more  productive  than  slave  or  serf  labor, 
and  that  serfdom,  or  slavery,  was  really  an  encum- 
brance upon  a  people  rather  than  an  aid  to  power. 

Negro  slavery  in  America  had  flourished  because  of 
its  isolation  and  of  the  character  of  the  fundamental 
law  upon  which  the  federation  was  constructed.  The 
southern  states,  as  might  have  been  expected,  were 
stronger  in  military  genius  than  the  states  of  the 
North.  This  was  true  because  agriculture  was  entirely 
in  the  hands  of  slaves,  leaving  the  master-class  free 
to  cultivate  military  traditions.  The  confederacy 
presented  a  state  very  like  that  of  ancient  Rome.  It 
was  a  sporadic  economic  growth,  quite  out  of  relation 
to  the  environment  surrounding  it.  It  might  have 
continued  uninterruptedly  for  centuries  had  its  isola- 
tion been  complete.  But  it  could  not  live  in  the 
midst  of  an  environment  so  essentially  unfavorable  to 
its  survival  as  that  of  the  North  and  of  Europe.  The 
entire  material  wealth  of  the  confederacy  was  insig- 
nificant beside  that  of  a  few  states  in  the  North.  Its 
immense  nominal  wealth  consisted  of  its  slaves,  and 
these  could  not  be  converted  into  instruments  either 


iv         ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  CONTINUED      135 

of  defence  or  of  aggression.  When  the  conflict  came, 
the  confederacy  fell  in  spite  of  the  brilliant  superiority 
of  its  military  leaders  at  the  outset.  It  had  no  wealth 
with  which  to  match  the  instruments  of  its  powerfully 
wealthy  neighbor. 

Not  irrationally  may  we  conceive  that  the  entire 
history  of  nations  may  be  explained  on  the  same 
principle  as  that  used  here  to  show  the  causes 
accounting  for  the  growth  and  decay  of  an  institution 
which  has  given  rise  to  the  most  diverse  opinions  and 
to  the  fiercest  controversies  upon  which  human 
thought  has  been  expended.  Yet  when  we  examine 
into  those  activities  of  nations,  the  sum  of  which  is 
called  "  human  history,"  we  find  that  they  are  all 
soluble  into  elements  formed  by  forces  released 
among  men  when  societies  discovered  agriculture,  and 
were  thus  strengthened  by  long  residence  in  the 
midst  of  ever-changing  environments  fixed  to  localities 
which  were  themselves  always  the  same. 

Indeed,  were  it  not  for  these  very  forces,  history 
would  have  been  impossible.  If  tribes  were  com- 
pelled to  wander  from  place  to  place  without  the 
solidarizing,  integrating,  and  conserving  force  gener- 
ated and  increased  by  permanence  of  location,  civili- 
zation had  never  risen  in  any  form.  The  stability  and 
integrity  of  nations  were  not  only  dependent  upon 
these  forces,  but  were  created  by  them.  And  these 
forces  are  more  powerful  to-day  than  ever  before  in 
the  progress  of  every  society  in  the  civilized  world. 

To  understand  this  principle  in  its  true  significance, 
we  need  only  to  turn  to  the  history  of  any  people  in 
any  age.  Whatever  dominant  character  that  history 
may  possess  —  whether  it  be  warlike,  commercial,  or 


136  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

aesthetic  —  it  consists  only  of  a  narration  of  the 
changes  within  the  social  organism  occasioned  by 
changes  in  the  environment  while  tJie  locality  has  re- 
mained fixed.  This  is  perfectly  true  of  all  of  those 
nations  with  whose  development  we  are  adequately 
acquainted.  That  it  is  likewise  true  of  nations  not  so 
well  described  in  preserved  records,  there  can  be  not 
the  slightest  doubt.  The  rise  and  fall  of  Greece  and 
of  Rome  are  fully  described  when  the  panorama  of 
these  changes  is  unfolded  before  us.  We  are  not 
familiar  with  the  beginnings  of  these  groups,  but  we 
are  somewhat  better  informed  when  we  look  to  the 
nations  of  modern  Europe.  It  is  hardly  necessary 
again  to  dwell  upon  the  changes  of  environment 
through  which  Europe  has  passed,  or  to  illustrate 
how  it  is  only  that  change  that  has  produced  the 
European  society  of  to-day,  moral  and  industrial. 
And  when  it  is  remembered  that  these  environmental 
alterations  had  been  impossible,  had  not  permanence 
of  place  been  assured,  it  becomes  clear  that  European 
civilization  is  the  product  of  the  forces  we  have 
described. 

We  have  now  to  consider  another  and  an  important 
division  of  the  subject.  If  we  admit  as  true  the  prin- 
ciple here  set  forth,  viz.,  that  progress  depends  upon 
change  of  environment  without  change  of  locality,  how 
are  we  to  explain  those  very  marked  differences 
observed  between  nations  developed  simultaneously 
either  in  contiguous  or  in  widely  separated  surround- 
ings? What  is  the  principle  on  which  depend  the 
heterogeneous  characters  of  the  social  groups  we  see 
in  the  great  family  of  nations  of  which  human  society 
is  composed  ?  That  these  differences  are  extreme 


iv         ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT  CONTINUED      137 

cannot  be  called  into  question.  On  the  contrary, 
they  make  up  the  most  conspicuous  fact  open  to  the 
observation  of  social  science.  No  two  social  groups 
are  alike.  An  anatomy  of  Russia  will  show  that 
nation  to  be  remarkably  different  from  Germany. 
Italy,  France,  England,  Austria,  and  Spain  are  all 
different  from  each  other.  China  and  India  present 
still  more  striking  unlikenesses  to  the  nations  of 
Europe  than  these  latter  present  among  themselves ; 
while  groups  composed  of  European  races  in  non- 
European  localities,  are  yet  unlike  their  ancestral 
groups  in  many  important  particulars. 

It  must  be  understood  that  we  are  here  concerned 
with  social  groups,  rather  than  with  races.  The  ques- 
tion of  race  is  here  a  secondary  consideration.  The 
United  States  is  a  complex  of  almost  all  the  races  of 
Europe.  It  is  true  that,  very  broadly,  we  may  say 
that  all  of  these  are  members  of  one  or  two  great 
races.  But  we  see  that  the  nations  of  Europe  present 
striking  differences,  however  close  may  be  the  affinity 
in  blood  between  them  ;  while  the  United  States  and 
Australia  are  very  different  from  them  all.  That  the 
question  of  race  is  an  important  one,  generally,  and 
of  primary  importance,  may  be  admitted  without  con- 
troversy. It  would  be  idle  to  hold  otherwise,  when  we 
consider  the  negro  races  of  Africa  in  comparison,  say, 
with  the  Teutonic  races  of  Europe  and  America. 
The  phylogenetic  process  may  be  said  to  be  historical. 
That  is  to  say,  it  is  hardly  conceivable  that  a  new 
race  of  men  will  be  produced  from  the  mixing  of 
races  so  very  different  as  the  Caucasian  and  the 
Mongolian.  It  is  conceivable  that  slight  differences, 
such  as  are  found  between  the  Teutonic  and  the  Celtic 


138  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

races,  may  disappear  in  a  race  uniting  these  two. 
These  races  are  mixing  now,  and  types  produced  by  the 
mixture  are  not  appreciably  different  from  the  parent 
stocks,  ethnically  regarded.  But  if  the  phylogenetic 
process  is  complete,  or  nearly  so,  the  sociogenetic  pro- 
cess is  not.  That  social  growth  is  progressing  rapidly 
in  groups  open  to  observation  need  scarcely  be  pointed 
out. 

To  return,  then,  to  the  inquiry.  What  is  the  cause 
of  these  marked  differences  between  the  species  and 
varieties  of  nations  of  which  human  society  is  con- 
stituted ?  The  only  rational  answer  to  this  question 
is  that  offered  by  the  theory  of  natural  selection. 
Variation,  seized  upon  by  natural  selection,  has  pro- 
duced, through  the  complementary  forces  of  inheri- 
tance and  adaptation,  all  the  races  of  living  creatures 
inhabiting  the  earth ;  and  these  forces,  through  the 
influence  of  isolation,  have  caused  the  divergence  we 
see  in  classes,  genera,  and  species.  While  it  is  true 
that  isolation  has  not  been  so  pronounced  as  to 
cause  very  wide  divergence  between  the  few  races 
of  men  inhabiting  Europe,  it  has  been  pronounced 
enough  to  cause  striking  divergence  between  the 
characters  of  the  groups  or  nations,  as  groups  or 
nations,  into  which  these  races  are  divided.  Diver- 
gence of  nations  is,  in  fact,  a  necessary  consequence 
of  the  process  of  evolution  set  up  by  a  constantly 
changing  environment  when  the  changes  are  due  to 
fixity  of  locality.  Some  little  illustration  may  be 
needed  to  make  this  point  clear. 

The  earliest  environment  of  ancient  Greece  was 
warlike.  Until  the  Greeks  became  safe  from  ex- 
ternal attack,  the  city-states  best  adapted  to  war 


iv         ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT   CONTINUED      139 

were  the  dominant  powers.  But  these  were  de- 
posed by  the  supremacy  of  Athens  when  commercial 
prosperity  permitted  the  development  of  art.  The 
progress  of  Greece  was  above  all  an  aesthetic  and 
intellectual  progress.  It  is  beside  the  question 
whether  Greek  art  and  Greek  letters  took  their  origin 
from  those  of  Egypt  or  Assyria.  The  archaic  art 
of  the  Greeks  presents  many  characters  similar  to 
those  of  Egyptian  art  in  its  most  highly  advanced 
state.  On  the  other  hand,  the  influence  of  Egypt 
upon  the  speculations  of  the  earliest  European  phi- 
losophers is  a  matter  of  some  controversy.  That  the 
young  and  growing  Greece  should  have  been  influ- 
enced by  its  old  and  stable  neighbor  is  highly 
probable.  And  it  is  probable  also  that  Greece,  hav- 
ing taken  up  the  movement  at  the  point  reached 
by  Egypt  in  its  highest  development,  should  have 
carried  it  upwards  on  the  only  possible  lines  of 
advancement. 

But  it  may  be  admitted  that  the  origin  of  European 
art  and  letters  was  independent  of  African  or  Asi- 
atic influence,  and  was  spontaneous  in  its  own  envi- 
ronment. This  question  has  little  bearing  on  the 
matter  here  to  be  determined.  Greece,  in  the  classic 
age,  was  a  nation  with  characters  widely  divergent 
from  Egypt  and  from  all  other  groups  of  its  own  or 
any  other  known  age.  Its  isolation  left  it  free  to 
grow,  and,  within  less  than  one  thousand  years,  it  had 
developed  into  a  social  organism  as  specific  among 
the  world's  peoples  as  any  race  of  animals  among 
living  things.  The  history  of  Greek  art  and  intellect 
is  the  history  of  Greek  environment.  The  very  rapid 
acceleration  of  the  aesthetic  and  intellectual  develop- 


140  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

ment  of  the  Hellenes  reacted  with  profound  effect 
upon  the  industrial  life  of  the  people. 

Art  and  intellect  occupied  the  highest  place  in  the 
esteem  of  the  Greeks,  and  utility  the  lowest.  The 
great  men  among  the  Athenians  were  the  poets,  the 
painters,  the  sculptors,  the  philosophers,  and  those 
persons  of  wealth  by  whom  they  were  most  liberally 
patronized.  Philosophers  were  given  the  freedom 
of  cities,  statues  were  raised  to  them  in  public  places, 
and  on  more  than  one  occasion  they  were  elected 
rulers  of  cities  and  given  tyrannical  power,  simply 
because  of  their  achievements  in  the  realm  of  the 
intellectual.  Poets,  painters,  and  dramatists  were 
the  recipients  of  honors  almost  as  great,  and  the 
works  of  Homer  were  regarded  with  a  veneration  as 
deep  as  that  attaching  to  sacred  scriptures  among 
other  peoples. 

On  the  contrary,  mere  utility  was  despised.  Use- 
ful inventions  with  the  Greeks  were  the  bare  by- 
products of  philosophical  study.  Aristotle,  in  whom 
alone,  of  all  the  philosophers,  were  the  seeds  of  an 
utilitarian  system,  was  far  from  diverting  his  philos- 
ophy from  purely  intellectual  purposes.  The  useful 
was  contemned  alike  by  the  cultured  and  uncultured. 
It  is  almost  inconceivable,  in  modern  ways  of  think- 
ing, that  this  absolute  devotion  to  the  aesthetic  and 
the  intellectual  should  have  been  possible  with  the 
populace.  But  the  conception  will  become  less  diffi- 
cult when  the  environment  of  Athens  is  taken  into 
account.  Every  free-born  Greek  was  reared  from 
his  birth  amid  scenes  tending  to  minimize  his  esteem 
for  utility.  When  the  highest  honors  were  accorded 
to  the  thinker  and  the  artist,  it  was  natural  that 


iv         ORGANISM  AND   ENVIRONMENT  CONTINUED      141 

proficiency  in  intellect  and  art  should  have  been  the 
most  desirable  qualification  of  citizenship,  the  more 
so  that  the  democratic  principles  animating  the  nation 
left  free  scope  for  genius,  however  humbly  born. 

The  accumulated  effect  of  these  forces  is  expressed 
in  the  excellence  of  ancient  Grecian  art,  poetry,  and 
philosophy.  In  the  metaphysics,  the  cosmology,  the 
mathematics,  the  dialectics  of  the  Greeks,  are  found 
the  germs  of  the  modern  sciences.  The  inductive 
method  was  suggested  by  Aristotle;  the  conception 
of  evolution  was  familiar  to  all  of  the  Athenians ;  the 
importance  of  definition  was  insisted  upon  by  Soc- 
rates ;  Pyrrho  foreshadowed  the  method  of  Descartes  ; 
Democritus  and  Epicurus  sought  the  quantitative 
analysis  of  matter,  and  announced  a  theory  of  atoms. 
Thales  and  his  followers  attempted  the  qualitative 
analysis  of  matter,  and  remotely  indicated  the  law  of 
the  conservation  of  energy ;  Plato  Attempted  to  erect 
upon  a  scientific  basis  a  theory  of  The  Beautiful  and 
The  Good,  thereby  touching  closely  upon  aesthetics 
and  ethics ;  the  geometry  of  Euclid  and  the  geom- 
etry and  mechanics  of  Archimedes  are  comparable 
with  the  achievements  of  modern  mathematicians. 

In  polite  letters  the  achievements  of  the  Greeks 
were  in  parity  with  their  philosophical  performances. 
Euripides,  Aristophanes,  Sophocles,  and  ^Eschylus 
produced  the  refinement  of  tragedy  and  comedy, 
while  in  lyric  and  narrative  poetry,  as  well  as  in 
rhetoric  itself,  the  literary  remains  of  the  Greeks  are 
unexcelled.  In  painting,  sculpture,  and  architecture, 
the  Grecian  masters  left  little  to  be  desired.  The 
masterpieces  of  Polygnotus,  and  of  other  great  Athe- 
nian painters,  were  the  ideals  of  the  men  who  created 


142  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

the  superb  pictures  found  in  the  ruins  of  Pompeii, 
some  of  which  have  been  pronounced  superior  in 
mastery  of  line  to  the  best  work  of  modern  draughts- 
men. The  Romans  imported  their  artists  from 
Greece.  The  environment  of  Rome  could  never 
have  developed  a  Praxiteles  or  a  Phidias.  Vitruvius, 
the  only  Roman  architect  whose  works  remain,  was 
inferior,  in  the  purely  aesthetic  conception  of  archi- 
tecture, to  Phidias,  who  designed  and  supervised  the 
works  on  the  Acropolis. 

Thus,  the  development  of  the  Grecian  people, 
diverging  in  the  direction  of  art  and  intellect,  created 
an  environment  of  an  aesthetic  and  philosophical  char- 
acter unique  among  the  societies  known  to  history. 
That  this  environment  was  extraordinary  hardly  needs 
to  be  emphasized  when  the  fact  is  that  much  of  it 
remains  after  the  lapse  of  twenty  centuries  of  decay ; 
enough  of  it,  indeed,  materially  to  influence  the  art 
and  letters  of  Europe  in  the  present  time.  With  the 
exception  of  the  lever  and  the  screw,  the  influence 
of  ancient  Greece  upon  modern  industrial  environ- 
ment is  nil.  But  the  causal  next  between  Athenian 
art  and  philosophy  and  modern  Europe  in  these  two 
departments  of  civilized  life  will  not  be  disputed.  If 
we  grant,  then,  that  divergence,  as  caused  by  isola- 
tion, produced  the  specific  characters  of  the  Grecian 
people,  we  may  grant,  too,  that  this  divergence  was 
itself  the  product  of  changes  in  the  environment; 
and  that  the  isolation  lay  essentially  in  the  perma- 
nence of  the  locality. 

The  single  example  of  divergence  found  in  the 
development  of  the  civilization  of  Greece  will  serve  to 
illustrate  the  law  in  its  general  application.  Analy- 


iv         ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT   CONTINUED      143 

sis  of  the  differences  between  the  nations  of  the  pres- 
ent day  will  show  that  divergence  has  been  caused  by 
the  same  force  producing  an  environment  of  art  and 
intellect  of  a  superlative  degree  in  Greece.  The  peo- 
ples of  Europe,  with  the  exception  of  Russia  and 
Turkey,  are  closely  akin  in  their  political  and  indus- 
trial characters ;  and  this  is  to  be  expected  because 
of  the  fact  that  their  isolation  is  less  marked  than 
that  of  the  two  nations  named.  The  economic  envi- 
ronment of  Russia  has  advanced  but  little  from  that 
of  mediaeval  times.  It  is  only  within  the  last  genera- 
tion that  Russia  has  materially  increased  its  manu- 
facturing industries.  Serfdom  was  an  institution  of 
great  vitality  in  Russia  long  after  it  had  become 
obsolete  among  the  Teutons  and  the  Celts.  Militancy 
would  naturally  continue  to  thrive  in  a  group  where 
the  cultivation  of  the  soil  was  carried  on  by  a  species 
of  slavery ;  the  ownership  of  the  slave  passing  from 
the  lord  to  the  soil.  Its  isolation  has  enabled  it  not 
only  to  resist  confluence  of  environment  with  its 
neighbors,  but  to  preserve  its  own  internal  strength, 
and  to  continue  little  changed  throughout  the 
centuries. 

The  very  powerful  force  exerted  by  the  character 
of  environment  upon  the  character  of  social  groups 
is  exemplified  in  the  similarity  of  Russia  with  its 
great  congener,  China.  Both  are  essentially  agricul- 
tural countries.  Both  are  the  most  militant  of  exist- 
ing states  among  the  important  civilizations  of  the 
world.  The  political  organic  life  of  the  two  countries 
is  essentially  the  same.  China  has  not  the  excellent 
fighting  mechanism  possessed  by  Russia,  for  the 
probable  reason  that  its  geographical  isolation  has 


144  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

surmounted  the  necessity  of  very  efficient  methods  of 
defence.  If  China  had  been  as  geographically  close 
to  the  countries  of  Europe  as  Russia  has  been,  it  is 
probable  that  China  would  be  now  as  strongly  armed 
as  the  populous  empire  of  the  Czar.  The  aesthetic 
and  intellectual  environment  of  the  Chinese  diverges 
widely  from  that  of  the  Russians.  But  that  environ- 
ment was  established  centuries  ago  and  has  not 
changed  perceptibly  within  historic  time.  Chinese 
intelligence  is  no  larger  to-day  than  it  was  in  the 
time  of  Confucius.  Chinese  art  has  not  developed, 
so  far  as  can  be  learned,  within  the  measure  of  cen- 
turies. The  aesthetic  and  intellectual  environment  of 
this  people  was  developed  long  ago ;  and  the  Chinese 
refuse  to  be  influenced  by  the  methods  of  European 
development  in  these  two  directions. 

The  notion  forces  itself  upon  us  that  the  very 
stable  state  of  social  organisms,  like  these  two  vast 
empires,  is  not  due  so  much  to  "  backwardness,"  as 
it  is  to  a  cause  to  be  found  in  the  fundamental  nature 
of  social  growth.  It  is  only  rational  to  believe  that 
a  social  organism  has  as  many  limitations  in  its  devel- 
opment as  any  other  organism  produced  by  natural 
selection.  The  common  error  into  which  most  men 
fall  when  discussing  the  apparent  hopelessness  of  a 
nation  like  Russia  or  China,  is  to  consider  only  the 
individual  man  and  not  the  nation  itself.  Because  it 
is  possible  to  civilize  an  individual  Chinese  or  Rus- 
sian, it  is  thought  that  it  should  be  entirely  possible 
to  convert  these  great  groups  into  organisms  like 
Germany,  England,  or  the  United  States.  But  this 
by  no  means  follows.  The  common  error  consists  in 
leaving  the  national,  or  political,  psychic  forces  out  of 


iv         ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT   CONTINUED      145 

the  account.  A  nation  can  never  rise  above  the 
moral  and  intellectual  state  which  is  the  product  of 
its  environment.  Moral,  intellectual,  and  aesthetic 
conceptions  are,  as  we  have  seen,  the  effects  of  envi- 
ronment upon  the  social  mind.  And  the  growth  of 
environment  is  a  slow  process. 

Man,  by  artificial  selection,  can  produce  new  and 
highly  divergent  varieties  of  animals  and  plants. 
His  power  in  that  process  is  very  great.  Given  the 
same  power  over  social  organisms,  and  it  should  be 
clear  that  he  could  produce  similar  results.  But  this 
power  is  seldom,  if  ever,  found.  Marked  as  is  the 
limit  of  this  power  in  producing  what  might  be  called 
new  species  of  animal  and  vegetable  organisms,  it  is 
evanescent  when  an  attempt  is  made  to  produce  a 
new  species  of  social  organism.  A  powerful  nation 
could,  by  force,  impose  much  of  its  own  economic 
environment  upon  a  weaker  nation.  But  never  could 
a  conquered  nation,  when  it  is  far  below  its  con- 
queror's moral  and  intellectual  state,  rise  to  the  state 
of  its  master  without  a  very  long  and  very  painful 
process  of  adaptation. 

The  civilized  nations  of  the  world  do  not,  as  yet, 
possess  sufficient  control  over  the  uncivilized  perma- 
nently to  impose  upon  them  environments  which  will 
so  profoundly  alter  mental  characters  as  to  insure  a 
permanence  of  a  new  psychic  state.  That  such  pro- 
cess will  ever  take  place  is  highly  improbable  in  the 
very  mental  nature  of  civilized  men  themselves.  The 
motives  controlling  the  actions  of  civilized  nations 
are  essentially  economic.  If  Europe  desires  to  "  civ- 
ilize "  the  Chinese,  the  desire  does  not  spring  from 
purely  altruistic  causes.  European  instruments  of 


146  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

force  will  not  be  used  permanently  to  alter  the  envi- 
ronment of  China,  or  of  other  Asiatic  or  African 
peoples,  if  the  change  be  not  economically  beneficial 
to  Europeans.  We  can  hardly  believe  otherwise 
when  we  find  that  instruments  of  war  are  directed 
against  savage  and  semi-civilized  peoples  so  as  to 
destroy  those  peoples  for  no  other  reasons  than 
purely  commercial  ones.  If,  therefore,  the  civiliz- 
ing process  be  none  other  than  a  forced  change  of 
environment,  with  a  corresponding  moral  and  intel- 
lectual effect,  that  change  will  not  be  made  if  from 
it  there  flow  not  commercial  benefits  to  those  who 
bring  it  about.  Attempts  to  enforce  such  change  are 
followed  by  partial  or  complete  destruction  of  the 
conquered  nations,  and  such  has  been  the  experience 
of  history. 

It  is  entirely  conceivable  that  progressive  peoples 
shall  soon  be  able  to  force  a  new  economic  life  upon 
inferior  and  weaker  nations,  and  reap  commercial 
benefits  for  themselves  by  doing  so.  This  process 
has  been  going  on  in  human  society  since  the  rise  of 
true  agriculture.  It  is  only  an  enlargement  of  the 
process  whereby  man  has  forced  new  environments, 
for  economic  purposes,  upon  lower  animals.  But  it 
is  scarcely  conceivable  that  the  Teutons  and  Celts,  or 
their  mixed  descendants,  shall  be  enabled  to  fashion 
old  civilizations  into  new  ones  except  for  commercial 
purposes.  If  China  and  other  countries  like  her  are 
to  be  "  civilized,"  they  can  be  civilized  only  by  com- 
mercial conquest.  No  motive,  save  an  economic  one, 
is  sufficiently  powerful  and  continuous  to  induce 
Western  peoples  to  force  the  rest  of  the  world  into 
the  use  of  the  printing-press  and  the  railroad.  To 


iv         ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT   CONTINUED      147 

suggest  that  any  other  motive  is  possible  will  cause 
thinking  people  to  smile. 

The  essential  importance  of  acquired  characters  is 
exemplified  here.  There  is  no  analogy  between  the 
inherited  characters  of  an  individual  and  the  acquired 
characters  of  a  community  passed  down  from  gener- 
ation to  generation.  The  distinction  between  the 
social  and  the  vital  organism  must  always  be  borne  in 
mind.  A  social  organism  does  not  inherit  any  char- 
acter from  itself.  We  cannot  say  that  an  individual 
man  has  transmitted  to  himself  his  own  characters. 
His  growth  is  determined  by  two  factors :  Inheri- 
tance and  adaptation.  Other  things  being  equal,  the 
environment  may  mould  one  man  into  an  astronomer 
and  another  into  a  coal-miner.  Both  may  have  in- 
herited a  very  high  capacity,  let  us  say,  for  music. 
But  we  cannot  truthfully  say  that  the  mature  man 
has  inherited  the  form  of  his  hands  from  the  infant. 
The  coal-miner's  environment  would  mould  his  hands 
into  a  peculiar  form,  and  that  of  the  astronomer  might 
produce  a  peculiar  change  from  the  normal  in  the 
eye.  But  eyes  and  hands  are  changed  by  adaptation 
alone. 

This  distinction  will  become  clearer  when  we  con- 
sider the  growth  of  a  social  organism  in  the  same 
way  that  we  regard  the  growth  of  a  vital  organism. 
A  young  nation  derives  certain  characters  from  its 
parent.  The  method  of  propagation  among  societies 
is  the  same  as  that  observed  among  the  very  lowest 
protists.  This  method  is  by  simple  self -division. 
The  parent  organism  grows  until  it  reaches  a  size  at 
which  the  nutritive  process  can  be  no  longer  carried 
on  with  mechanical  facility.  Then  the  organism 


148  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

divides  into  two  separate  individuals,  each  of  which 
is  essentially  like  the  other.  In  very  much  the 
same  way  are  born  new  social  groups.  If  a  social 
organism  can  be  said  to  inherit  any  characters  at  all, 
it  must  be  understood  that  by  inheritance  is  here 
meant  something  very  different  from  inheritance  as 
applied  to  vital  organisms.  The  infant  group  is 
merely  a  part  of  the  parent  group  transplanted  in  a 
new  place.  The  characters  which  mark  the  new 
group  are  not  inherited,  really.  They  are  really 
derived,  and  this  distinction  is  all  important. 

If,  when  discussing  social  growth,  we  use  the  term 
"derived  characters"  instead  of  "inherited  charac- 
ters," we  shall  avoid  much  confusion  of  ideas.  But 
there  is  another  distinction  between  social  and  vital  or- 
ganisms in  this  process  of  propagation.  All  characters 
derived  by  the  new  organism  from  its  parent  are  char- 
acters acquired  by  the  parent.  The  tendency  in  the 
new  group  to  acquire  characters  not  possessed  by  its 
parent  is  not,  as  it  may  seem,  an  inherited  tendency. 
That  tendency  is  explained  by  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciple involved  in  the  permanence  of  the  locality  in 
which  the  changing  environment  is  fixed.  Derived 
characters  may  be  modified,  eliminated,  or  developed 
until  the  new  social  group  has  been  transformed  into 
a  people  •  widely  divergent  from  its  parent-people. 
But  all  of  these  changes  are  the  product  of  environ- 
mental alterations,  constantly  increased  in  specific 
directions  by  the  isolation  of  the  new  community 
from  the  old.  And  all  of  them,  without  exception, 
are  dependent  upon  the  psychic  forces  developed  in 
the  new  community  by  the  new  surroundings. 

To  illustrate  this  law  we  need  only  point  out  the 


iv         ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT   CONTINUED      149 

extreme  reluctance  with  which  European  societies 
change  their  ancient  governmental  forms.  European 
ideas  of  government,  long  associated  with  monarchy 
and  nobility,  shrink  from  sudden  revolutions  doing 
away  with  these  institutions.  The  psychic  state  of 
Europe  has  been  largely  modified  within  the  past  five 
centuries  in  this  respect.  The  power  of  kings  and 
nobles  has  been  materially  lessened,  but  the  forms  of 
the  institutions  have  remained,  and  will  remain  long 
after  monarchy  and  nobility  will  have  ceased  to  have 
any  industrial  significance  whatever. 

But  changed  as  European  ideas  have  been,  they 
are  still  very  different  from  those  of  the  new  com- 
munities formed  by  emigration.  The  most  striking 
examples  of  this  nature  are  found  in  the  British  col- 
onies. The  formal  ties  binding  the  colony-organisms 
to  England  are  tenuously  indirect.  The  internal  struc- 
ture of  Canada,  Australia,  and  the  South  African 
colonies  are  very  different  from  that  of  England. 
Monarchy  or  nobility  is  not  an  institution  in  these 
communities.  Nobles  do  not  spontaneously  arise  in 
them.  They  can  never  develop  a  native  king  or  a 
native  nobility.  Their  citizens  are  so  seldom  ennobled 
by  the  parent  community  that  nobility  is  not  a  desid- 
eratum. With  the  severance  of  the  very  slight  tie 
associating  them  with  the  parent  people,  would  vanish 
every  vestigial  idea  of  royalty  and  its  dependencies. 
This  has  been  proved  in  the  history  of  the  only  col- 
ony so  severed.  The  United  States  is  the  most  strik- 
ing example  of  the  elimination  and  development  of 
derived  political  characters,  and  New  Zealand  is  the 
most  striking  example  of  that  process  in  its  effect 
upon  derived  industrial  characters. 


150  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

We  shall  have  to  discuss  in  another  place  the 
economic  and  intellectual  growth  of  rising  nations, 
and  to  dwell  more  at  length  upon  this  theme.  It  is 
desirable  that  here  we  confine  ourselves  to  a  con- 
sideration of  social  propagation  and  development 
in  general.  It  is  a  matter  of  observation  that  charac- 
ters derived  from  a  parent  community,  or  from  a 
community  closely  related  in  national  feeling,  may 
develop  rapidly  in  a  young  and  growing  group.  So 
rapidly,  indeed,  that  a  few  centuries  suffice  to  produce 
a  distinct  type.  This  fact  is  illustrated  in  the  develop- 
ment of  ancient  Greece,  if  we  assume  that  archaic 
Greek  art  was  derived  from  the  fully  developed  art 
of  Egypt,  or  that  Greek  philosophical  speculation 
was  derived  from  the  already  perfected  philosophy 
of  India  and  Egypt  together.  We  find  the  Egyptian 
notion  of  metempsychosis  and  the  Buddhist  notion 
of  reincarnation  reappearing  in  Plato  and  in  Pythago- 
ras ;  and  the  Brahmin  notion  of  evolution  reappear- 
ing in  the  Milesian  school.  But  the  transplanted 
ideas,  altering  rapidly  in  response  to  fresh  changes  in 
the  environment,  produced  the  distinct  type  of  intel- 
lectual and  aesthetic  growth  found  in  the  perfected 
philosophy  and  the  perfected  art  of  Hellas.  Egyp- 
tian ideas  of  art,  remaining  isolated  in  their  own 
environment,  did  not  develop  an  acropolis ;  and 
we  look  in  vain  for  any  philosophy  among  the 
Aryans  like  the  scepticism  in  which  Greek  intellect 
culminated. 

It  does  not  necessarily  follow  that  derived  charac- 
ters must  always  be  associated  with  a  young  group 
which  is  itself  a  detached  part  of  a  parent  community. 
Social  growth  rests  upon  a  psychic  and  not  a  -vital 


IV         ORGANISM   AND   ENVIRONMENT   CONTINUED      151 

basis.  If  this  were  not  an  unalterable  law,  we  could 
not  in  any  manner  account  for  the  very  great  diver- 
gence between  the  political  groups  of  Europe  and 
their  children  in  Africa,  America,  and  Australia.  It 
is  the  ideas  of  men  —  their  psychic  characters  —  that 
preserve  the  ancient  forms  of  European  governments. 
And  only  in  so  far  as  these  ideas  have  changed,  has 
Europe  passed  through  the  political  transformation 
recorded  in  history.  If  this  be  true,  a  young  nation, 
in  the  formative  process,  can  derive  characters  from 
an  older  but  non-parental  group.  This  we  can  see 
exemplified  in  the  Latin  republics  of  South  America. 
Their  democratic  ideas  were  derived  from  their  older 
and  more  powerful  neighbor  on  the  north.  Between 
the  two  was  a  close  psychic  contiguity.  The  United 
States,  deriving  its  political  characters  from  England, 
developed  the  idea  of  a  representative  government 
and  eliminated  the  idea  of  royalty  and  its  dependency 
of  the  nobility.  The  Latin  republics  of  America  and 
the  French  republic  in  Europe  were  produced  by 
the  same  psychic  process.  The  transition  effected  in 
France  was  more  violent  and  less  stable,  because 
French  ideas  had  not  been  so  deeply  modified  as  to 
make  the  passage  from  one  form  to  the  other  easy 
and  natural. 

The  idea  of  constitutional  government  had  been 
derived  by  the  United  States  from  an  already  highly 
developed  constitutional  country  ;  the  revolution  was 
easy  and  natural.  France  still  retained  its  concep- 
tions of  monarchy  and  nobility  in  full  force,  and  the 
revolution  was  therefore  dynamic.  But  the  French 
revolution  was  no  less  formal  than  that  of  England 
and  America.  For  if  the  form  of  monarchy  and 


152  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

nobility  was  destroyed,  their  substance  has  remained. 
We  are  thus  presented  with  the  anomalies  of  a  formal 
monarchy  in  England  associated  with  a  substantial 
democracy,  and  a  formal  democracy  in  France  asso- 
ciated with  a  substantial  militant  regime.  The  public 
mind  of  France  was  prepared  for  the  change  to  a 
constitutional  monarchy,  but  not  for  a  constitution 
as  democratic  as  that  of  England.  The  attempt  to 
transform  the  nation  from  a  kingdom  into  a  republic 
resulted  in  reactionary  forces  producing  a  monarchy 
no  more  limited  than  the  one  it  replaced.  It  is  more 
than  probable  that  if  the  attempt  had  not  been  made 
to  force  a  political  form  upon  France,  to  which  French 
ideas  were  repugnant,  and  for  which  no  suitable  en- 
vironment existed,  the  revolution  would  not  have  been 
dynamic.  The  Prussian  revolution  of  1848- 1850  was 
accomplished  without  a  struggle  of  pain.  Had  an 
attempt  been  made  to  change  Prussia  into  a  re- 
public, all  the  turbulent  history  of  France  had  been 
repeated. 

The  social  mind  of  France,  in  resisting  for  the  past 
century  the  imposition  of  government  to  which  the  or- 
ganism is  not  easily  adaptable,  has  produced  political 
redundancies  that  have  given  to  France  the  reputation 
of  the  most  unstable  nation  in  history.  Within  a 
single  century  France  has  passed  through  a  political 
fluxion  in  which  are  seen  successively  a  kingdom,  a 
republic,  an  empire,  a  restoration  of  the  kingdom,  a 
restoration  of  the  empire,  a  second  restoration  of  the 
kingdom,  a  revolution  followed  by  a  change  of  kings, 
a  second  republic,  a  third  restoration  of  the  empire, 
and  a  third  republic.  Compared  with  this,  the  most 
turbulent  nations  in  history  are  stability  itself.  Be- 


iv         ORGANISM   AND    ENVIRONMENT  CONTINUED      153 

cause  of  these  rapid  reactions  the  people  of  France 
have  been  called  "volatile."  But,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  with  this  single  exception,  France  is  one  of  the 
three  progressively  stable  groups  of  Europe.  Its 
intellectual,  economic,  and  aesthetic  environment  is 
equal  in  some  respects  to  that  of  England  and  supe- 
rior in  many ;  while  compared  with  that  of  Germany, 
it  is  superior  in  most.  The  cause  of  this  remarkable 
state  of  things  is  found  in  the  fact  that  the  industrial, 
aesthetic,  and  intellectual  growth  of  the  group  has 
been  natural,  while  its  political  growth  has  been 
forced. 

Political  changes  are  always  due  to  a  transforma- 
tion of  mental  forces,  the  roots  of  which  are  found  in 
common  needs.  As  larger  quantities  of  vital  force 
are  converted  into  the  form  of  moral  conceptions, 
governments  are  modified  so  as  to  conform  in  their 
structure  and  function  to  the  desires  of  the  commu- 
nity. The  governmental  change  may  be  great  or 
small,  according  as  the  pressure  of  economic  (hence 
the  moral)  force  is  strong  or  weak.  If  a  community 
suffer  from  hunger  or  other  forms  of  poverty,  and 
associate  its  pain  with  the  doings  of  its  government, 
its  natural  desire  will  be  to  replace  the  government 
with  another  form  or  to  substitute  new  rulers  for  the 
old.  Moral  energy,  flowing  from  vital  energy,  thus 
moves  the  nation  to  action  by  which  its  pain  is  eased. 
And  in  societies  of  men  vital  force  must  always  be 
converted  into  moral  force  before  the  change  can 
take  place.  When  the  change  does  take  place,  its 
quantity  is  always  determined  by  the  quantity  of  the 
moral  force  which  forms  the  motive. 

The   successive   political   changes   through   which 


154  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

England  has  passed  (with  one  exception)  have  not 
been  violent  in  a  marked  degree.  The  monarchy 
has  yielded,  progressively,  to  the  moral  energy  press- 
ing upon  it.  The  idea  of  monarchy  has,  therefore, 
not  been  associated  with  economic  pain,  and  demo- 
cratic ideas  have  constantly  enlarged,  while  the  form 
of  monarchy  has  been  maintained.  The  king  of 
England  has  no  real  power  to  interfere  in  any  degree 
with  the  industrial  activities  of  the  people,  either  by 
passively  resisting  legislation,  or  by  actively  control- 
ling the  army.  The  French  kings,  however,  with 
their  dependent  nobility,  were  essentially  a  clog  to 
the  freedom  of  the  people,  and  the  nobles  were  really 
enlarging  their  power  to  a  degree  that  made  the 
common  life  painful  in  both  its  nutritive  and  propa- 
gative  functions.  The  reaction  was  correspondingly 
great.  When  the  change  of  government  came,  the 
nation  flew  to  the  extreme  opposite  form.  As  a 
starving  creature  will  gorge  itself  upon  food,  the 
French  people  gorged  themselves  with  liberty,  if 
we  may  make  use  of  so  far-fetched  a  metaphor.  With 
the  satiation  of  their  pressing  wants,  they  returned, 
not  to  their  normal  mind,  but  far  beyond  it,  and  the 
military  empire  was  established.  Since  that  time 
France  has  been  seeking  an  equilibrium  between  its 
political  and  its  economico-ethical  ideas,  and  the  per- 
turbability  and  perturbation  seen  in  its  political  life 
have  been  the  result. 

In  spite  of  the  common  conception  of  uncertainty 
associated  with  the  political  future  of  France,  that 
future  can  be  predicted  with  a  high  degree  of  cer- 
tainty. We  can  understand  the  motions  of  political 
groups  as  definitely  as  we  can  those  of  planets  and 


iv         ORGANISM  AND   ENVIRONMENT  CONTINUED      155 

comets,  and  even  more  so ;  for  we  have  a  more  inti- 
mate knowledge  of  the  efficient  causes  of  the  one 
than  we  have  of  the  other.  We  understand  the  pro- 
cesses of  nutrition  and  assimilation  somewhat  better 
than  we  do  the  nature  of  gravitation.  We  know  that 
men,  once  having  learned  that  they  could  store  up 
food  against  the  future,  could  never  again  neglect 
to  sow  and  reap  and  to  rear  animals  for  future  use. 
We  know  that  when  an  organism  learns  by  experi- 
ence that  contact  with  fire  causes  severe  pain,  con- 
tact with  fire  is  mechanically  avoided.  It  is  natural 
to  suppose  that  when  military  despotisms  and  slavery 
are  found  to  be  the  most  efficient  instruments  for 
the  maintenance  of  internal  peace  and  prosperity, 
despotisms  and  slavery  continue  to  exist ;  and  that 
when  experience  has  taught  that  despots  and  slaves 
are  only  the  cause  of  pain,  despotism  and  slavery  are 
modified. 

It  is  unnatural  to  conceive  that  a  nation  whose 
growth  and  comfort  has  been  largely  increased  by 
a  limitation  of  royal  power  shall  return  to  unlimited 
royal  power  as  a  means  of  further  enlarging  its  com- 
fort. To  hold  thus  would  be  equivalent  to  holding 
that  living  creatures  prefer  a  painful  environment  to 
a  pleasurable  one.  A  community,  having  passed  from 
a  nomadic  state  to  a  permanently  located  environ- 
ment, will  never  return  to  a  nomadic  state  in  order  to 
increase  its  power  over  other  communities,  and  thus 
facilitate  its  own  economic  life.  To  hold  thus  would 
be  equivalent  to  holding  that  the  tendency  of  a  planet 
is  to  stop  and  reverse  its  motion.  Experience  tells 
us  otherwise.  No  great  power  of  prophecy  is  required 
to  assure  us  that  there  is  no  danger,  however  remote, 


156  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

that  England  will  return  to  a  political  state  in  which 
a  Henry  VIII.  can  exist  upon  the  throne,  or  that  the 
United  States  will  ever  again  become  an  English 
colony,  or  that  the  Latin  republics  will  voluntarily 
resume  their  vassalage  to  Spain.  These  things  are 
not  possible  of  conception,  because  we  know  that  the 
moral  sense  of  Englishmen  regard  with  horror  the 
sufferings  of  their  ancestors  under  the  reign  of  Henry ; 
that  the  people  of  the  United  States  are  no  more 
desirous  now  than  they  were  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury of  paying  taxes  to  an  English  king  without 
representation  in  parliament;  that  the  Latin  repub, 
lies,  however  pure  their  kinship  in  blood  to  Spain, 
do  not  desire  to  be  governed  by  a  ruler  in  Madrid. 
If  it  could  be  shown  that  an  unlimited  monarchy 
would  immeasurably  increase  the  national  comfort 
of  England  we  would  be  justified  in  supposing  that 
a  return  to  unlimited  monarchy  would  be  highly  prob- 
able. But  all  the  evidence  that  human  experience 
can  offer  shows  the  contrary  to  be  the  truth. 

If  we  now  apply  this  knowledge  to  France,  its 
future  becomes  clear.  The  empire,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  the  result  of  a  reaction  which  carried  the  nation 
backward  to  a  government  even  more  powerfully 
monarchic  than  that  of  the  kings.  The  immediate 
motive  of  the  French  was  found  in  their  belief  that 
this  new  and  stronger  form  of  government  facilitated 
foreign  conquest  and  hence  a  larger  quantity  of  na- 
tional wealth  and  ease.  This  illusion  dispelled,  the 
kingdom  was  restored,  but  the  real  power  of  the  king 
and  the  nobles  was  greatly  modified.  A  second  reac- 
tion produced  a  new  republic,  and  the  crystallization 
of  this  republic  into  an  empire  was  easy.  But  as  soon 


iv         ORGANISM   AND    ENVIRONMENT  CONTINUED      157 

as  the  new  empire  came  to  be  associated  with  poverty 
and  discomfort,  it  fell,  the  more  quickly  when  it  was 
proved  to  be  an  inefficient  means  of  discovering  new 
comforts  of  mind  by  foreign  conquest.  The  govern- 
ment replacing  it,  while  more  democratic  in  form  than 
that  of  England,  is  really  more  militant.  France  may 
return  again  to  a  monarchic  form,  and  another  foreign 
war  may  serve  to  crystallize  that  form.  But  French 
ideas  can  never  again  tolerate  an  unlimited  monarchy. 
The  prediction  that  its  industrial  growth  and  the 
moral  ideas  flowing  from  it  will  maintain  France  in 
an  ever-enlarging  democracy  is  thus  verified  by  ex- 
perience. The  mere  form  of  the  government  is  imma- 
terial, as  we  have  seen  in  comparing  England  and 
the  France  of  to-day.  It  is  the  substantial  govern- 
ment which  is  predicted. 

For  the  illustrations  here  used  of  the  actions  of 
social  organisms  and  the  laws  by  which  they  operate, 
we  have  considered  societies  the  histories  of  which 
are  commonly  familiar.  The  number  of  these  illus- 
trations might  be  increased  indefinitely.  But  this  is 
hardly  needful.  It  must  be  understood  that  we  are 
dealing  with  principles,  and  not  with  particular  in- 
stances. The  principles  must  apply  to  all  societies 
developing  in  a  fixed  environment.  In  the  succeed- 
ing chapter  we  shall  examine  into  the  phenomenon 
of  the  decay  and  death  of  social  species,  and  attempt 
to  point  out  the  cause.  But  at  present  we  need  only 
emphasize  the  principle  directly  concerned  with  the 
growth  and  development  of  political  groups.  That 
principle  may  be  stated  in  these  words  :  The  process 
of  civilization  depends  upon  the  power  of  political 
groups  indefinitely  to  alter  their  environment,  while  the 


158  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP,  iv 

locality  in  which  the  environment  constantly  changes 
remains  constantly  fixed. 

It  may  be  argued  that  the  same  definition  can  be 
applied  to  a  society  in  process  of  decadence.  But 
while  this  may  seem  true,  it  will  be  presently  seen 
that  the  principle  is  stated  here  only  in  its  widest 
generalization.  It  will  be  seen  that  another  principle 
qualifies  the  first  one,  so  as  to  exclude  from  the  defi- 
nition the  process  of  decay.  And  it  will  be  further 
seen  that  the  changes  in  a  decadent  civilization  are 
due  to  causes  lying  outside  the  power  of  the  society, 
or  to  the  loss  of  the  power  further  to  alter  the  en- 
vironment in  order  further  to  increase  the  organic 
life  of  the  body  social. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    INCREMENT    OF    PSYCHIC    CAPACITY 

THE  intimate  life  of  a  nation  has  many  aspects 
touched  upon  but  lightly,  when  they  are  touched  upon 
at  all,  in  that  extensive  literature  going  currently  by 
the  name  of  history. 

Men  are  now  interested  in  the  simple  and  daily 
doings  of  those  ancient  peoples  which  long  ago  in- 
habited the  earth,  and  of  whose  ways  of  life  time  has 
left  few  remains  save  those  buried  under  the  ruins  of 
cities,  or  preserved  in  fragments  of  books  which  have 
escaped  the  hands  of  barbarians. 

We  are  not  satisfied  now  with  a  knowledge  of  the 
striking  events  of  the  history  of  Rome.  We  desire 
to  know  not  only  the  details  of  the  political  plot  cul- 
minating in  the  murder  of  Julius  Caesar,  but  would  like 
to  have  described  for  us  the  kind  of  sword  or  dagger 
Brutus  used  and  the  kind  of  shoes  he  wore.  We 
desire  to  know  the  fashions  which  Roman  ladies 
were  fond  of,  the  methods  practised  in  Roman 
kitchens  to  prepare  the  family  meal,  and  the  furni- 
ture and  the  decorations  of  the  Roman  dining  room. 

For  us,  the  political  character  of  Clodius,  and  the 
destruction  he  wrought  in  Rome,  have  scarcely  a 
more  vivid  interest  than  has  the  manner  in  which 
the  Roman  gentleman  took  his  daily  bath,  and  the 

159 


I6O  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

implements  he  used  in  the  process.  A  description  of 
the  apartments  in  Cicero's  house  on  the  Palatine  Hill, 
and  of  his  many  beautiful  villas,  is  more  entertaining 
for  us  than  his  political  quarrels  and  his  exile.  The 
methods  used  by  the  Roman  people  in  building  their 
domiciles,  how  they  manufactured  and  preserved 
their  wine,  how  they  laundered  their  clothes,  painted 
their  pictures,  and  carried  on  their  trade,  within  and 
without  the  city,  are  sometimes  more  worthy  of  atten- 
tion than  the  battles  of  Germanicus  or  the  Punic 
wars.  We  wish  to  know  the  character  of  Roman 
money,  its  value,  and  the  manner  of  its  minting.  Did 
the  Romans  have  banks  like  our  own  ?  How  were 
their  ships  built  and  who  built  them  ?  How  were 
their  goods  bought  and  sold  ?  What  goods  were  con- 
sidered of  the  highest  value,  and  what  were  their 
notions  of  business  generally  ? 

All  of  these  things  have  an  important  interest  for 
us,  and  why  ?  Simply  because  we  delight  to  com- 
pare the  private  manners  of  a  great  and  historical 
people  with  our  own  ;  and  because,  furthermore,  it  is 
of  these  simple  manners  and  things  that  the  continu- 
ous and  permanent  life  of  a  nation  is  seen  to  consist. 

There  is  yet  another  aspect  of  a  nation's  life  which 
proceeds  from  the  uses  and  utilities  hinted  at  above ; 
that  is  the  morals  of  a  people,  together  with  their 
mentality.  It  is  found  in  their  national  prejudices, 
their  hopes,  their  aspirations,  their  pleasures,  their 
domestic  and  family  relations,  their  loves,  their  hates, 
their  sorrows.  This  aspect  of  a  national  life  is  even 
of  more  sympathetic  value  than  the  mere  parade  of 
its  utilities.  We  desire  to  know  of  the  tilings  a  people 
used  in  their  daily  living,  chiefly  because  in  these  we 


v  THE   INCREMENT  OF   PSYCHIC   CAPACITY          l6l 

can  find  the  key  to  their  common  thoughts  and  their 
simple  human  feelings.  It  is  this  thought-life,  this 
life  of  passion,  of  feeling,  to  which  is  given  the  adjec- 
tive psycJiic.  And  if  we  are  acquainted  with  the  com- 
mon psychic  life  of  the  Romans,  we  can  more  clearly 
comprehend  those  large  and  stirring  events  of  Roman 
history  which  arise  out  of  it  to  mark  a  period  or  to 
culminate  an  age.  In  the  present  chapter  we  shall 
discuss  a  particular  phase  of  this  psychic  life  which 
we  have  attempted  here  to  define.  But  before  pro- 
ceeding to  that  discussion,  let  us  review  the  principles 
of  social  growth  laid  down  in  the  pages  which  go 
before. 

Men,  in  common  with  all  living  creatures,  are  com- 
pelled by  the  strongest  promptings  of  their  nature 
first  and  above  all  to  secure,  with  the  least  possible 
effort,  those  things  which  afford  a  free  and  ample 
life,  and  which  enable  them  to  reproduce  and  rear 
their  offspring  in  peace  and  security.  In  doing  this 
they  come  into  conflict  with  individuals  of  their  own 
kind,  all  of  whom  are  impelled  by  motives  of .  a  like 
nature.  All  are  moved  to  action  by  forces  primarily 
rooted  in  the  bodily  functions  of  life.  Out  of  these 
bodily  functions  arise  the  functions  of  the  mind  — 
that  psychic  life  which,  through  the  faculties  of  mem- 
ory and  reason,  makes  possible  a  larger  and  united 
life  called  social.  As  an  ample  and  a  free  existence 
for  the  individual  is  deemed  the  highest  good,  so  are 
deemed  right  those  acts  by  which  that  purpose  is 
furthered ;  whereas  conduct  interfering  with  that 
freedom  and  amplitude  is  deemed  wrong.  Thus  we 
see  that  vital  force  is  converted  into  moral  force,  and 
moral  force  is  mental,  or  psychic. 


1 62  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

The  primary  foundations  of  great  groups  of  men, 
like  tribes  and  nations,  are  found  in  certain  needs  of 
organic  life  pertaining  to  the  rearing  of  offspring. 
The  young  of  man  are  kept  close  to  the  parents  for 
a  long  time  after  birth,  and  on  this  natural  necessity 
a  habit  of  association  is  formed  becoming  perma- 
nently fixed  as  new  families  are  produced  and  social 
needs  are  enlarged.  Foundations  thus  laid  are  the 
rudimentary  beginnings  of  the  larger  and  more  com- 
plex social  organization  which  comes  about  when  men 
discover  that  they  can  cultivate  the  soil  and  breed 
animals,  and  by  this  practice  secure  a  permanent 
place  of  residence  for  the  tribe,  around  which  accu- 
mulates an  ever-expanding  artificial  environment 
which,  together  with  the  land  under  it,  has  been 
called  wealth. 

Upon  this  important  and  fundamental  relation  to 
the  environment  the  secondary  foundations  of  society 
are  built ;  and  from  these  latter  arise  those  wonder- 
ful superstructures  of  civilization  known  in  human 
history  by  the  name  of  nations.  It  matters  not  when 
or  where  we  find  a  nation ;  whether  in  past  or  in 
present  time ;  whether  powerful  or  weak,  rich  or 
poor,  civilized  or  semi-civilized,  it  is  always  built  on 
these  foundations  and  on  these  foundations  only. 

With  this  new  power  over  nature  comes  increase 
of  every  faculty,  of  every  liberty,  of  every  function, 
individual  and  collective.  As  the  physical  life  of  a 
people  expands,  so  does  their  mental  or  psychic  life, 
and,  inclusively,  their  moral  conceptions  and  sensibili- 
ties. It  is  this  difference  of  environment,  this  in- 
crease in  the  number  and  kind  of  tools  used  by  men, 
that  marks  off  the  civilized  man  from  the  savage. 


v  THE   INCREMENT  OF   PSYCHIC   CAPACITY          163 

The  higher  moral  sense  of  the  European,  as  compared 
with  the  African  negro,  is  due  to  his  environment 
primarily ;  and  it  is  by  no  means  improbable  that  the 
heavier  and  more  complex  brain  of  the  European  is 
due  to  the  same  cause. 

The  psychic  life  of  the  individual  man  —  that  is, 
his  desires,  his  hopes,  his  aspirations,  his  moral  and 
intellectual  energy  —  is  therefore  found  to  have  its 
roots  in  the  things  surrounding  him ;  and  upon  this 
psychic  life  of  the  individual  depends  the  character 
of  the  social  life  of  the  political  group  of  which  he  is 
a  part. 

When  we  treat,  then,  of  social  life  and  social 
growth,  we  must  not  forget  that  its  basis  is  mental  as 
well  as  physical ;  and  its  closest  relations  to  the  indi- 
vidual are  really  more  mental  than  physical.  For 
that  reason  the  mental  energy  of  a  great  nation  can 
profoundly  alter  its  social  code  —  the  rules  by  which 
its  individual  members  are  bound.  Having  under- 
stood that  the  physical  wants  of  the  individual  are 
perceived  first  in  a  mental  way,  and  then  satisfied  by 
the  action  of  the  mind  upon  the  body,  we  can  pro- 
ceed on  the  principle  that  social  growth  arises  out  of 
psychic  growth.  At  the  same  time  we  must  remem- 
ber that  social  action  is  something  more  than  a  num- 
ber of  individuals  each  one  of  whom  is  seeking  to 
gratify  his  personal  wants.  It  is  very  much  more 
than  this,  for  this  would  only  be  a  mixture  of  mental 
units,  whereas  social  action  is  a  combination  of  such 
units,  each  of  which  is  profoundly  altered  in  its  na- 
ture by  contact  with  the  others.  We  can  carry  this 
figure  of  speech  farther  by  likening  social  life  to  a 
chemical  compound,  such  as  water.  Water  is  not 


164  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

merely  two  atoms  of  hydrogen  and  one  of  oxygen. 
In  the  compound  product  these  two  gases,  as  gases, 
disappear.  Water,  the  product  of  their  unition,  has 
properties  quite  different  from  the  properties  of  either. 

So  the  action  of  an  individual,  functioning  in  a 
group,  is  something  more  than  the  functioning  of  a 
man.  It  is  the  functioning  of  a  man  inseparably 
bound  up  with  others  of  a  like  kind.  The  man  can 
be  conceived  as  being  isolated  from  society.  But 
once  we  so  conceive  him,  we  take  from  him  every 
trait  which  proclaims  him  a  social  being.  Social 
action,  then,  must  be  conceived  as  meaning  the  com- 
bined product  of  individual  desires,  all  of  which  are 
modified,  in  every  one  of  their  aspects,  by  contact 
with  the  force  of  similar  desires  in  others. 

No  matter  how  much  we  might  study  the  body  of 
a  man,  in  its  physical  structures  and  functions,  we 
could  never  conceive  of  him  as  a  social  being,  and 
hence  we  could  form  no  conception  of  the  part  he 
plays  in  society.  Such  a  study  would  be  very  simi- 
lar to  separating  from  a  play  the  lines  recited  by  one 
of  the  dramatis  personae  and  reading  them  by  them- 
selves. From  such  reading,  however  close,  we  could 
never  learn  the  plot  of  the  play,  the  bearing  of  the 
various  parts  upon  one  another,  and  the  concerted 
action  which  comes  to  denouement  in  one  scene,  and 
is  made  perfect  in  the  last.  To  know  what  the  play 
is,  we  must  have  all  the  persons  before  us,  and  by 
following  the  concert  of  action  through  the  play, 
master  the  united  purpose  of  the  several  and  confluent 
parts. 

One  more  illustration  of  this  principle  may  be 
useful  in  preparing  the  way  for  the  pages  which  are 


v  THE   INCREMENT   OF  PSYCHIC  CAPACITY          165 

to  follow.  Let  us  suppose  that  the  physiologist  desires 
to  study  the  function  of  the  human  brain.  The  most 
important  part  of  that  organ  is  made  up  of  innumer- 
able minute  bodies  called  ganglion  cells.  Any  of 
these  cells  can  be  studied  by  itself,  and  much  of  its 
function  —  within  itself  —  can  be  described  and  under- 
stood. But  is  it  not  manifest  that  he  who  would  mas- 
ter the  function  of  the  brain  must  understand,  not  the 
individual  cells  in  themselves,  but  the  manner  in  zvhich 
they  act  together  ?  Given  the  nature  of  the  ganglion 
cell  itself,  that  knowledge  will  help  us  to  understand 
the  united  action  of  all  of  the  cells ;  and  inasmuch 
as  we  can  understand  the  one,  insomuch  can  we 
understand  the  other ;  but  of  cells  or  brain  we  can 
understand  very  little  until  we  have  understood  the 
functions  of  both. 

We  can  now  approach  the  subject  indicated  in  the 
title  of  the  present  chapter. 

In  a  developing  social  group  there  goes  forward  a 
twofold  process  of  change, — change  in  the  expanding 
artificial  surroundings,  and  a  corresponding  change 
in  the  internal  structure  of  the  group,  —  this  latter 
alteration  being  usually  described  by  the  term  "polit- 
ical history."  This  double  process  began  when  the 
group  itself,  or  its  social  group-ancestor,  discovered 
that  it  could  alter  its  environment  without  the  neces- 
sity of  changing  its  locality.  But  these  continuous 
changes  would  be  impossible  did  not  every  fresh 
alteration  of  the  surroundings  leave  a  new  effect 
upon  the  social  mind  which,  in  turn,  reacts  upon  the 
surroundings.  Some  illustrations  are  necessary  to 
make  this  law  clear  ;  and  while  we  are  drawing  them, 
let  us  always  remember  that  we  are  endeavoring  to 


1 66  THE  LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

understand  social  action,  first  by  understanding  the 
action  of  the  individual,  and  then  by  comprehending 
how  innumerable  individuals,  all  imbued  with  the 
same  motives,  modify  their  reciprocal  conduct. 

It  is  a  fact  with  which  every  one  is  familiar  that  as 
soon  as  an  individual  acquires  the  things  he  desires,  he 
immediately  finds  that  his  desires  have  been  enlarged, 
and  that  his  wants,  comparatively  few  before,  are 
now  comparatively  many.  If  this  were  not  a  bottom 
fact  of  human  experience,  there  would  nowhere  be 
observed  that  very  conspicuous  phenomenon  observed 
everywhere  and  in  all  times  —  the  accumulation  of 
riches  by  individual  men.  Riches  is  only  another 
name  for  wealth,  and  we  have  already  noted  that 
wealth  consists  of  land,  in  its  natural  state  or  other- 
wise, and  of  the  things  produced  by  human  labor. 
Men  love  wealth  primarily  because  it  facilitates  those 
two  motive  functions  of  life  and  propagation  of  which 
we  have  had  so  much  to  say.  But  the  capacity  for 
the  use  of  wealth  depends,  very  largely,  upon  the 
actual  possession  of  the  wealth  itself.  We  can  illus- 
trate this  law  by  a  few  extreme  examples. 

The  man  of  culture  can  find  a  pleasurable  use  for 
the  many  and  varied  things  which  form  his  personal 
surroundings.  He  can  derive  enjoyment  from  numer- 
ous products  of  industry  and  art  which  would  be  per- 
fectly useless  to  the  less  cultured  man  in  whose  hands 
they  might  be  placed.  A  profound  musical  composi- 
tion which,  to  one  ignorant  of  music,  would  not  be  as 
useful  as  the  homeliest  product  of  industry,  is,  to  the 
cultured  man,  a  source  of  the  keenest  pleasure.  Lit- 
erary and  scientific  books  which,  to  the  unlettered, 
are  mere  encumbrances,  are  to  the  cultured  man  a 


v  THE   INCREMENT   OF   PSYCHIC   CAPACITY          1 67 

conditio  sine  qua  -non  of  happiness.  Objects  of  beauty 
in  general,  highly  prized  by  the  man  of  culture,  in 
the  ignorant  and  untrained  mind,  are  only  remotely 
associated  with  genuine  enjoyment.  And  why  ?  Is 
it  not  clear  that  the  obvious  reason  is  this :  That  the 
cultured  man  has  for  the  use  of  certain  objects  a 
capacity  which  the  uncultured  man  has  not  ? 

This  fact  is,  as  we  have  said,  obvious.  But  what 
we  wish  here  to  find  out  is,  not  so  much  the  difference 
between  men  in  their  capacity  for  the  use  of  wealth, 
as  the  cause  of  that  difference.  Why  is  one  man 
capable  of  deriving  the  keenest  pleasure  from  the  use 
of  a  piano,  while  others  would  be  only  encumbered 
and  annoyed  by  its  possession  if  they  themselves  were 
required  to  play  upon  it  ?  The  answer  to  this  question 
becomes  quite  plain  when  we  give  it  the  reflection  it 
deserves.  The  expert  performer  can  use  a  piano 
because  he  has  had  possession  of  the  instrument  for  a 
long  time.  There  is  no  other  reason.  If  he  had 
never  possessed  it,  he  never  could  have  used  it.  And 
if  he  is  an  expert  performer,  it  is  only  so  because 
continuous  possession  of  the  instrument,  together 
with  continuous  use  of  it,  has  given  him  a  capacity  for 
its  use  which  otherwise  he  could  never  have  acquired. 
At  one  extreme  of  our  comparison  we  find  the  expert 
pianist ;  while  at  the  other  we  find  the  individual  who 
cannot  strike  a  simple  chord. 

A  piano  is  only  a  part  of  the  environment ;  and 
thus  we  may  state  our  particular  conclusion  in  general 
terms,  by  saying  that  the  nature  of  the  environment 
has  widely  enlarged  in  the  one  man  a  potential  ca- 
pacity which  is  common  to  both. 

The  capacity  of  the  son  of  a  musician  for  music,  or 


1 68  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

of  the  son  of  an  astronomer  for  astro-physics,  would 
be  larger  than  that  of  a  coal-miner's  son  for  either. 
It  is  meant,  of  course,  that  the  sons  of  such  artists 
would  be  taught  the  use  of  musical  instruments  and 
of  spectroscopes.  We  do  not  mean  that  a  laborer's 
son  might  not  make  a  more  proficient  musician  than 
would  a  musician's  son.  We  know,  in  fact,  the  con- 
trary is  sometimes  true.  But  the  coal-miner's  son, 
reared  in  the  mines,  with  never  a  sight  of  a  musical 
text  or  of  spectral  analysis,  would  be  capable  in  no 
wise  of  using  those  tools  which,  in  the  hands  of  the 
artist  or  of  the  observer,  long  possession  had  made 
easy  and  familiar. 

But  these  are  only  extreme  examples.  Between 
the  extremes  lie  many  degrees  of  difference.  If  a 
tool  has  been  in  the  possession  of  one  individual 
longer  than  in  that  of  another,  the  one,  on  our  princi- 
ple, should  have  greater  capacity  for  its  use  than  has 
the  other.  There  is  a  variant  in  quantity  from  the 
formula,  which  we  will  treat  fully  in  another  place. 
That  is  to  say,  given  equal  use  and  equal  possession 
to  two  individuals,  and  one  will  still  have  greater 
capacity  for  use  than  the  other.  Thus  of  two  men, 
having  had  pianos  in  their  possession  the  same  length 
of  time,  and  having  used  them  with  equal  industry, 
one  will  be  a  more  expert  pianist  than  the  other. 
The  reader  has  probably  thought  of  this  variant  him- 
self, but  we  must  content  ourselves  here  with  the 
promise  we  have  made  of  accounting  for  it  later. 
Here  we  desire  to  emphasize  the  general  principle 
which  will  not  be  denied  by  anybody :  Capacity  for 
use  —  all  other  things  being  equal  —  depends  upon 
the  possession  of  the  thing  used.  Of  two  pianists, 


v  THE   INCREMENT  OF  PSYCHIC   CAPACITY          169 

equally  capable  by  nature  for  the  art  of  piano  playing, 
that  one  who  has  used  pianos  for  the  longer  time  will 
be  able  better  to  perform  upon  them.  Thus,  in  prin- 
ciple, all  differences  between  human  capacities  for 
the  utilization  of  wealth  are  determined  by  possession. 
The  individual  who  is  very  poor,  who  possesses  very 
few  things  —  let  us  say  just  sufficient  to  subsist  upon 
without  positive  pain  —  will  have  a  utility-capacity 
proportionally  smaller  than  his  more  fortunate  fellows 
who  have  had  more  than  sufficient  for  these  natural 
wants. 

It  may  be  asserted,  however,  without  fear  of  con- 
tradiction, that  all  normal  men  have  equal  capacity 
for  the  thorough  enjoyment  of  those  simple  things  — 
food,  clothing,  shelter  —  which  make  pleasing  and 
easy  the  functions  of  nutrition  and  propagation,  —  of 
life  itself  and  its  healthy  reproduction.  Any  limita- 
tion, however  small,  put  upon  the  freedom  of  these 
two  functions  cannot  endure  without  the  accompani- 
ment of  pain  in  higher  or  lower  degree. 

From  this  general  law  there  flow  important  conclu- 
sions. As  the  individual  is  enabled,  by  whatever 
means,  to  annex  to  himself  a  large  share  of  the  envi- 
ronment, —  to  increase  his  wealth,  in  other  words,  — 
his  capacity  for  both  the  use  and  the  enjoyment  of 
wealth  will  tend  to  enlarge.  But  the  ratio  between 
wealth  possessed  and  capacity  for  enjoyment  is  itself 
subject  to  an  increase.  The  increase  is  geometrical, 
if  we  may  appositely  use  the  figure.  The  increment 
of  capacity  is  always  enlarged  beyond  any  possibility 
of  gratification  by  mere  possession.  This  process,  of 
enormous  and  seemingly  disproportionate  increase,  is, 
however,  purely  mental.  The  desire  for  possession 


I/O  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

is  psychic,  and  is  satisfied  by  a  psychic  fact,  when  the 
quantity  of  the  desired  wealth  outruns  the  physical 
capacity  for  its  use.  Thus,  if  a  man  desires  to  own  a 
railroad  and  its  rolling  stock,  his  want  is  satisfied  when 
he  is  assured  in  his  mind  that  the  law  gives  him  ex- 
clusive control  over  all  the  things  which  go  to  make 
up  a  railroad. 

Of  course  one  individual  cannot  himself  actually  use 
all  these  things.  At  best  he  can  use  but  an  insignifi- 
cant part  of  at  least  the  rolling  stock.  He  may  not 
desire  to  use  any  of  it.  He  may  never  care  even  to 
see  the  roadbed  or  the  stock.  His  use  for  them  is 
purely  mental  use ;  and  as  we  have  said,  his  want, 
being  purely  mental,  it  is  satisfied  by  a  mental  fact. 

Now,  this  disproportionate  increase  as  to  posses- 
sion and  capacity  is  precisely  the  principle  upon 
which  are  to  be  explained  those  remarkable  phe- 
nomena of  mind  grouped  under  the  vague  and  highly 
inadequate  terms  "  idealism  "  and  "ideals."  It  also 
explains  every  other  fact  of  human  progress  of  what- 
ever kind.  But  as  we  are  dealing  here  only  with 
use-capacity,  we  shall  speak  of  things  and  the  power 
of  using  things,  mentally  and  physically.  The 
nature  of  property  rights  is  social  and  hence  psychic. 

Let  us  ask  now  if  there  be  a  limit  to  this  mental 
capacity  for  possession,  and  if  we  find  that  there  is 
not,  let  us  ask  if  there  is  a  limit  to  the  quantity  of 
things  which  a  man  may  desire  to  own  for  himself 
and  over  which  he  can  be  given  exclusive  control.  In 
other  words,  is  there  a  limit  to  the  wealth  which  an 
individual  may  possess  of  his  own  right  ? 

If  we  remember  that  the  capacity  for  ownership  is 
mental  as  well  as  physical,  and  that  we  are  here  dis- 


v  THE  INCREMENT  OF  PSYCHIC  CAPACITY         1 71 

cussing  the  former,  we  may  answer  the  question  by 
saying  that  there  is  no  limitation  to  the  wealth  an 
individual  may  desire,  save  that  found  in  the  total 
quantity  of  all  the  wealth  that  exists.  If  the  capacity 
were  physical,  if  the  individual  were  required  actually 
to  use  the  things  he  desires  to  own  —  then  the  limita- 
tion would  be  very  narrow  and  easily  denned.  But 
the  capacity  is  not  physical.  It  is  mental.  And  no 
such  limitation  exists. 

Let  us  remember,  now,  that  the  same  logic  ap- 
plies to  mental  capacity  for  ownership  as  that 
which  applies  to  physical  capacity  for  use.  The 
increment  of  capacity  is  widened  by  possession. 
Thus  we  can  understand  those  degrees  of  power  to 
own  and  of  desire  to  own  which  mark  men  in  every 
age.  We  can  understand  how  some  individuals  may 
have  a  capacity  for  ownership  which,  by  enormous 
increase  of  possession,  has  been  rendered  so  large  as 
to  remain  unsatisfied  with  any  quantity  of  wealth 
short  of  everything  attachable,  by  property  right,  to 
one  personality.  The  size  of  the  capacity  has  noth- 
ing to  do  with  the  possibility  of  the  individual  using 
the  things  he  wants.  He  does  not  want  use ;  he 
wants  possession,  and  history  offers  us  numerous 
examples  of  extraordinary  capacities  of  this  kind. 
We  need  only  instance  the  Roman  Caesars,  and 
Alexander  the  Great,  who  not  only  desired  all  the 
things  in  this  world,  but  "  longed  for  another  world 
that  he  might  conquer." 

So  far  as  the  author  of  this  book  is  aware,  the  phe- 
nomenon he  has  here  described  has  not  been  observed, 
analytically,  by  other  writers.  The  phenomenon 
itself  is  common  enough  to  have  passed  into  popular 


1/2  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

proverb.  In  our  daily  conversation  we  say  that 
"  things  which  were  luxuries  last  year  become  neces- 
sities this  year  " ;  that  "  the  more  one  acquires  the 
more  he  wants."  There  are  a  dozen  similar  sayings 
all  of  which  recognize  a  fact  of  universal  experience. 
But  it  is  doubtful  if  this  law  of  utility  and  of  mind 
has  been  regarded  in  its  real  relations  to  social  prog- 
ress. Certainly  we  do  not  know  that  it  has  ever  been 
given  a  definite  name ;  and  this  want  we  shall  here 
attempt  to  supply  with  the  term  "  incremental  capac- 
ity." For  the  process  itself  —  that  is  to  say,  the 
action  of  increase  —  we  can  think  of  no  term  more 
fitting  than  "  incrementation,"  although  this  word  is 
a  pure  coinage  of  our  own.  Incrementation,  we  con- 
ceive, is  a  more  general  term  and  hence,  for  this 
particular  purpose,  a  more  efficient  one  than  "  prog- 
ress." When  we  describe  the  process,  therefore,  we 
may  sometimes  use  the  term  incrementation ;  and 
when  we  desire  to  denote  the  instrument  by  which 
the  process  is  furthered,  let  us  call  it  the  incremental 
capacity. 

We  must  beg  of  the  reader  to  remember  that  the 
work  we  are  here  attempting  to  do  is  an  analysis  of 
what  is  perhaps  the  most  complex  motion  conceiv- 
able ;  and  that  is  the  entire  assemblage  of  human 
facts.  He  must  therefore  be  prepared  to  hold  in  his 
attention  not  one  principle  of  human  conduct,  but  all 
of  the  principles  we  develop  as  we  go  along.  For  as 
each  fresh  principle  we  deal  with  grows  out  of  the 
others,  it  is  important  not  to  forget  their  mutual  bear- 
ings, each  upon  the  other,  and  one  upon  all.  As  we 
are  writing  for  the  general  reader,  as  well  as  for  the 
trained  student  of  political  and  social  science,  we  shall 


v  THE   INCREMENT  OF  PSYCHIC  CAPACITY          1/3 

try  to  carry  the  former  along  with  us  and  to  repeat, 
at  times,  the  matter  we  have  already  considered. 
The  author  believes  that  by  these  reminders  the  aver- 
age man  will  be  enabled  to  grasp  the  general  bases  of 
the  argument,  and  to  understand  the  supreme  conclu- 
sion reached. 

The  entire  fabric  of  our  design  depends  upon  the 
perception  of  the  simple  truths  of  life  which  any  man, 
however  limited  his  culture,  will  readily  apprehend. 
It  is  only  when  we  try  to  keep  simultaneously  before 
us  many  of  these  truths,  and  to  note  their  relations  to 
each  other,  that  a  little  difficulty  will  arise.  But  much 
of  that  difficulty  will  disappear  when  we  adopt  the 
methods  of  the  ancient  schoolmasters  who  bade 
their  pupils  always  to  remember  the  rule  when  en- 
gaged in  solving  problems. 

We  make  this  digression  to  introduce  to  the  mind 
of  the  reader  the  bearing  of  the  increasing  capacity 
upon  a  very  important  principle  laid  down  in  the 
preceding  chapter.  This  was  the  principle  of 
the  growing  environment  in  the  fixed  place.  We 
have  seen  that  the  capacity  for  use  depends  upon 
possession.  But  that  is  not  all.  It  depends  also 
upon  something  else.  It  depends  upon  the  fact  upon 
which  possession  itself  depends.  That  is,  it  depends 
upon  the  quantity  of  things  possessable.  If  the 
quantity  be  large,  the  capacity  will  be  large ;  if  the 
quantity  be  small,  so  will  be  the  capacity.  This  is 
not  half  so  difficult  a  conception  as  it  appears.  For 
if  it  be  true  that  the  more  a  man  has  the  more  he 
wants,  it  should  be  plain  that  the  more  he  is  able  to 
get  the  more  he  will  be  able  to  desire.  Now,  as  the 
quantity  of  wealth  —  that  is,  the  environment  —  con- 


1/4  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

stantly  increases,  the  quantity  of  possessable  things 
increases  with  it.  And  as  this  increase  of  wealth  is 
fundamentally  due  to  the  fact  that  environment  is 
changeable,  while  the  place  upon  which  it  grows 
remains  fixed,  it  follows  that  the  principle  of  the 
enlarging  capacity  is  derived  altogether  from  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  cumulative  wealth.  An  individual  would 
not  and  could  not  desire  to  possess  a  piano  if  a  piano 
had  never  existed.  But  having  a  harp,  he  might 
easily  desire  to  increase  the  number  of  its  strings ; 
and  this  increase,  together  with  other  accidental  obser- 
vations, might  lead  him  to  play  upon  the  harp  with 
hammers  instead  of  with  his  fingers.  These  simple 
observations,  constantly  increasing  in  number  and 
in  variety,  would,  we  can  conceive,  result  in  the  manu- 
facture of  a  grand  piano.  And  such,  indeed,  is  the 
fact.  It  is  a  fact,  also,  that  with  innumerable  pianos 
easily  obtainable,  the  number  of  persons  desiring 
pianos  would  be  proportionally  large ;  and  this  in- 
creased capacity  for  possession  would  arise  out  of 
the  further  fact  that,  innumerable  pianos  being  ob- 
tainable, innumerable  persons  would  be  capable  of 
using  them. 

If  the  reader  will  only  bear  in  mind  the  intimate 
and  causal  connection  between  the  two  phenomena  — 
that  of  the  incremental  capacity  and  of  the  cumula- 
tive environment  —  he  will  presently  see  how  the 
play  of  these  two  forces  produces  the  most  profound 
changes  in  any  rapidly  developing  social  group.  In 
pre-agricultural  times  tribes  ranged  over  the  earth 
without  any  fixed  habitation.  The  number  of  usable 
things  was  hence  necessarily  limited.  And  the  limit 
upon  wealth  restrained  the  capacities  of  men  from 


v  THE  INCREMENT  OF  PSYCHIC  CAPACITY          175 

mounting  to  higher  degrees.  But  as  soon  as  the  dis- 
covery of  true  agriculture  was  made  all  this  was 
changed.  The  capacity  for  use,  or  for  ownership, 
was  increased  in  proportion  as  the  quantity  of  wealth 
in  general  grew  larger.  Out  of  this  twofold  cause 
would  arise  a  twofold  effect.  Not  only  the  total 
wealth  would  become  cumulative,  but  the  wealth  of 
individuals  would  undergo  a  like  change.  Many  in- 
dividuals would  grow  constantly  richer,  but,  of  course, 
some  would  be  richer  than  others. 

Let  us  observe  the  effect  of  this  fact.  The  capac- 
ity for  use  and  ownership  is  regulated  by  the  quan- 
tity of  possessions.  If  a  man  have  much  wealth  he 
can  enjoy  much ;  and  if  little,  his  power  of  enjoyment 
is  small  in  proportion.  But  the  division  of  wealth  is 
always  unequal.  No  two  men  possess  precisely  the 
same  quantity  of  wealth.  There  is  variation  in  the 
size  of  private  possessions.  Therefore  there  is  varia- 
tion, too,  in  capacity  for  ownership.  In  a  state  such 
as  we  are  describing,  the  total  wealth  would  con- 
stantly enlarge.  The  aim  of  every  individual  would 
be  to  secure  for  himself  as  much  of  it  as  he  could. 
And  as  natural  selection  would  favor  those  who  had 
the  ability  to  increase  their  store,  the  number  of 
such  fortunate  ones  would  tend  to  increase.  It  is 
not  that  those  unfit  to  accumulate  wealth  would  die ; 
but  that  wealth  would  flow  to  those  who  could  acquire 
it,  and  these  would  naturally  increase  in  number  with 
the  expanding  wealth  available.  By  this  means  an 
ever  increasing  number  would  enjoy,  in  an  ever  in- 
creasing degree,  the  functions  of  bodily  and  mental 
existence. 

Of   course   it   is  clear  that  the  richer,  or  richest 


176  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

individuals,  could  not  themselves  personally  use  all 
of  their  wealth.  Most  of  it,  indeed,  would  be  actu- 
ally used  by  others  while  the  control  of  it  would 
adhere  to  a  few.  As  the  capacity  of  the  over-owner 
would  be  purely  mental,  it  could  grow  apace  without 
seriously  interfering  with  the  actual  use  of  the  wealth 
on  the  part  of  the  use-owner.  But  the  capacity  of 
the  use-owner  himself  is  subject  to  the  same  law  of 
increase  as  that  of  the  real  owner.  The  richer  the 
over-owner  would  become,  the  greater  would  become 
the  wealth  in  the  hands  of  those  who  would  actually 
use  it.  And  here  we  are  met  with  a  singular  phe- 
nomenon. 

Let  us  say  that  the  constant  increase  of  wealth,  not 
his  own,  in  the  hands  of  the  use-owner,  would  so 
highly  develop  his  capacity  for  enjoyment  that  he 
could  be  no  longer  satisfied  with  existing  systems  of 
tenure.  What  then  ?  Either  the  system  of  tenure 
would  be  changed,  or  the  use-owner's  capacity  would 
grow  smaller  while  the  wealth  in  his  hands  would 
actually  increase  !  Of  course  the  latter  proposition 
is  absurd.  The  only  resultant  phenomenon  conceiv- 
able would  be  a  change  in  the  system  of  holdings. 
And  this  is  the  very  cause  which  has  changed  the 
entire  economic  methods  of  Europe  from  a  system  of 
serf  labor  to  one  of  free  labor  within  the  past  ten 
centuries. 

Let  us  glance  at  another  phase  of  the  law  of  capac- 
ity as  it  affects  the  individual.  While  it  is  perfectly 
true  that  a  man  may  really  desire  to  own  everything 
ownable,  it  by  no  means  follows  that  he  can  do  so  as 
a  matter  of  fact.  Indeed,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  can 
do  nothing  of  the  kind.  In  political  science  there  is 


v  THE   INCREMENT  OF   PSYCHIC   CAPACITY          177 

a  conception  by  which  we  admit  that,  in  theory,  a 
sovereign  power  owns  everything.  We  will  only 
confuse  matters  here  by  going  into  that  question. 
We  can  discuss  it  at  another  time.  Here  let  us  ask, 
What  is  the  nature  of  the  restraint  laid  upon  individual 
men  in  their  acquisitions  of  wealth  ?  Restraint  there 
must  be,  for  if  there  were  not,  some  one  individual 
would  own  everything.  There  is  certainly  no  lack  of 
desire,  since  it  is  seen  to  inhere  in  the  majority  of 
men  from  the  beggar  to  the  autocrat.  Even  very 
honest  and  sincere,  if  unthinking,  philanthropists 
would  like  to  be  absolute  masters  of  all  wealth,  if 
only  for  the  purpose  of  seeing  that  it  was  properly 
used.  What,  then,  is  the  restraint  ? 

The  answer  is  to  be  found  in  the  very  desire  itself 
and  the  complex  facts  flowing  out  of  it.  When  two 
individuals  of  equal  strength  quarrel  over  the  posses- 
sion of  a  divisible  thing,  the  thing,  in  all  probability, 
will  be  equally  divided.  We  can  conceive  of  no  other 
issue;  at  least  if  we  assume  that  behind  the  equal 
strength  of  the  contestants  lies  equal  desire  for  pos- 
session. But  when  we  come  to  apply  this  principle 
to  the  common  affairs  of  social  life,  we  behold  aris- 
ing out  of  it  a  phenomenon  of  the  highest  importance. 
That  phenomenon  is  the  moral  sense  of  men  with 
concern  to  wealth  and  the  manner  of  its  division. 
The  desire  for  self-aggrandisement,  ever  pressing  the 
increment  of  capacity  forward,  is  thus  converted,  by 
the  general  conflict  of  its  forces,  into  an  energy  of 
mind  to  which  no  other  term  than  moral  can  be 
applied.  So  long  as  the  satisfaction  of  private  de- 
sires, within  certain  limits,  is  deemed  good  for  men, 
most  men  will  insist  upon  individual  liberty  within 


178  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

the  limitations  marked.  If  any  social  code  of  wealth- 
division  be  found  to  serve  well  the  common  desire, 
that  code  is  sustained  by  the  common  moral  judg- 
ment. Thus  the  system  of  slavery  has  the  moral 
approbation  of  a  community  which  conceives  that  the 
free  members  are  best  served  by  slavery.  It  may  be 
that  the  community  would  be  really  richer  and  freer 
without  the  institution.  The  common  moral  judg- 
ment may  be  based  upon  a  false  conception  of  facts. 
But  as  long  as  the  master-class  is  convinced  that 
comforts  are  more  easily  secured  by  slavery,  slavery 
will  be  morally  approved.  Let  the  community  see, 
however,  that  its  perception  is  false,  and  the  moral 
judgment  will  be  altered.  The  institution  will  be  as 
wrong  then  as  it  was  right  before.  If  the  community 
discovers  that  its  slaves  are  the  cause  of  internal  pov- 
erty, or  of  exterior  weakness,  the  system  must  go  to 
pieces,  or  the  community  must  lose  its  freedom. 

Thus  far  we  have  contemplated  the  action  of  the 
incremental  capacity  in  its  aspects  affecting  the  indi- 
vidual. We  will  now  consider  it  as  it  operates  upon 
a  social  scale. 

With  the  expanding  environment  and  the  conse- 
quent expansion  of  desire  for  wealth,  men's  ideas 
concerning  wealth  and  the  right  to  own  it  pass 
through  important  modifications.  The  modes  of 
wealth  undergo  a  similar  fluxion.  Opinions  and  ideas 
can  very  seriously  alter  the  appearance  and  the  uses 
of  a  community's  possessions,  and  the  power  of  the 
individual,  or  of  the  community  itself,  over  certain 
parts  of  wealth.  In  America  men  think  it  wrong 
that  church  property  should  be  taxed.  On  a  highway 
the  foot  passenger  has  eminent  rights.  School 


v  THE   INCREMENT   OF   PSYCHIC   CAPACITY          179 

buildings  are  protected  by  a  special  sanctity.  The 
state  says  to  the  individual,  "  You  shall  not  use  one 
inch  of  this  ground,  or  that  ground,  if,  by  using  it, 
you  shall  permanently  prevent  a  similar  use  of  it  by 
others." 

This  is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  the  incre- 
mental capacity,  functioning  in  the  growing  environ- 
ment, has  changed  the  nature  of  wealth  from  one 
mode  into  two.  Thus  arose  the  two  categories  of 
public  and  of  private  wealth  and  property.  Notions 
of  right  and  wrong  split  up  wealth  into  two  kinds, 
one  of  which  was  left  attachable  to  the  individual, 
the  other  remaining  out  of  his  reach.  But  as  the 
total  quantity  of  wealth  increased,  the  number  of 
things  made  public  property  increased  in  proportion. 
Yet  this  constant  enlargement  of  public  wealth  by  no 
means  limited  the  struggle  of  the  individual  to  attach 
to  himself  as  much  as  possible  of  the  wealth  which 
remained  so  attachable.  Once  a  thing  became  public 
property,  it  could  never  relapse  into  the  other  mode  so 
long  as  the  moral  sense  of  the  community  forbade  it. 

What  we  have  here  described  is  no  more  or  less 
than  the  origin  of  public  property.  We  can  illustrate 
the  matter  by  a  simple  example.  Let  us  imagine  that 
a  village  springs  up  on  the  sides  of  a  country  road. 
The  land  used  for  the  village  street  may  be  the  prop- 
erty of  a  private  person.  But  the  very  necessities  of 
the  life  of  the  village  would  demand  that  the  road  be 
kept  open  for  the  use  of  all.  As  the  village  would 
grow,  the  needs  for  keeping  the  road  open  would 
grow  with  it.  Without  the  general  right  of  way,  the 
business  of  the  town  would  be  blocked.  Thus  the 
road  would  acquire  a  certain  kind  of  sanctity  which 


l8o  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

none  could  violate  with  impunity.  It  would  be  to  the 
interest  of  every  individual  to  keep  the  road  free  at 
all  hazards.  He  who  would  attempt  to  restrict  that 
freedom  would  be  condemned  as  a  public  malefactor, 
and  with  the  best  and  soundest  of  reasons.  To  place 
a  permanent  barrier  in  the  road  would  be  adjudged  a 
monstrous  wrong  by  the  users  of  the  highway.  So, 
out  of  the  physical  necessities  of  the  people  would 
arise  an  idea,  moral  in  every  sense  of  the  word.  The 
road  was  found  useful  for  the  common  needs  of  daily 
life.  To  put  a  stop  upon  the  satisfaction  of  these 
needs  would  be  wrong-doing  in  a  high  degree.  The 
community  would  be  a  unit  against  it.  Here  the 
connection  between  utility  and  morality  is  clear  and 
indisputable. 

This  idea  of  morality  with  concern  to  the  road 
would  include  the  private  owner  of  the  land  as  well 
as  others.  It  would  be  to  his  own  interest  to  leave 
the  road  open.  He  himself  would  be  forced,  for  his 
own  profit,  to  maintain  the  public  rights,  and  thus  the 
general  moral  opinion  would  enforce  a  practice  which 
took  the  land  so  used  from  its  former  state  of  private 
property  and  placed  it  that  of  public  property.  The 
community  could  never  give  up  its  public  right  to  the 
road  without  destroying  its  own  existence. 

All  this  logic,  however,  will  be  seen  to  apply  not 
only  to  lands  used  as  roads,  but  to  every  other  thing 
a  community  deems  expedient  to  withdraw  from  the 
control  of  private  persons  and  to  make  an  object  of 
public  ownership.  But  it  will  appear,  from  our  argu- 
ment, that  this  rearrangement  of  wealth  cannot  be 
made  until  experience  has  taught  a  social  group  that 
greater  economic  freedom  flows  from  public  owner- 


V  THE   INCREMENT  OF   PSYCHIC  CAPACITY          l8l 

ship  than  from  private.  The  principle  is  fundamen- 
tal and  universal.  Once  that  a  community  finds  its 
liberties  and  comforts  better  served  by  public  than 
by  private  control,  it  is  deemed  wrong  —  essentially 
and  absolutely  wrong  —  to  permit  the  instrument 
used  for  securing  the  general  comfort  to  lapse  again 
into  private  hands.  Unless  we  admit  this  truth  we 
must  eliminate  human  desires  from  our  consideration. 
This  law,  however,  is  only  the  action  of  the  incre- 
mental capacity  in  operation  upon  a  social  scale. 

Still  bearing  in  mind  the  fact  that  as  wealth  en- 
larges, men's  capacities  for  its  use  and  ownership 
enlarge  with  it,  let  us  look  at  some  of  the  effects  of 
this  double  action  and  double  reaction  on,  let  us  say, 
a  young  and  developing  group  of  men  living  in  a 
fixed  place.  The  changes  set  up  by  this  fixity  of 
location  and  this  increase  in  wealth  are  no  less  than 
the  life  history  of  the  nation,  or  the  group,  or  the 
people  concerned. 

With  the  rapid  expansion  in  the  number  and  kind 
of  things  created  by  the  labor  of  the  group,  ideas 
would  multiply,  liberties  would  enlarge,  morality 
would  increase,  and  the  thought-life  and  bodily  life  of 
the  group  would  take  on  that  quick  and  beautiful 
growth  which  has  led  so  many  thinking  men  to  the 
conviction  that  human  society  is  an  organism  gov- 
erned by  laws  such  as  those  which  rule  the  life  of  a 
living  creature.  Responding  to  the  play  of  social 
forces,  the  group  sees  new  value  in  things  but  slightly 
valuable  before,  while  objects  which  were  once  of  no 
value  whatever  now  become  highly  desirable.  First 
among  these  things  is  land,  because  of  its  basic  rela- 
tion to  the  groupal  process.  The  space  utilized  for 


1 82  THE   LEVEL   OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

the  more  or  less  expansive  site  of  the  general  habita- 
tion is  the  tie  that  binds  the  expanding  movable 
environment  together,  releasing  the  forces  whose 
play,  through  the  increasing  capacities  of  men,  fash- 
ions the  young  society  in  its  desires,  its  institutions, 
its  intellectual  and  its  moral  existence. 

The  plastic  and  sensitive  social  structure  responds 
rapidly  and  easily  to  the  pressure  exerted  upon  it  by 
the  ever-changing  environment  of  wealth.  The  food- 
animal  and  food-plant  are  now  transformed  into  the 
beast  of  burden  and  the  seed.  The  rude  hunting 
tool,  or  implement  of  savage  warfare,  becomes  the 
instrument  of  manufacture  or  of  agriculture.  The 
loosely  constructed  hut  expands  into  the  substantial 
and  enduring  home.  Mere  trails,  beginning  nowhere 
and  ending  anywhere,  are  changed  into  well-worn 
roads  with  definite  terminations,  or,  flanked  by  busy 
houses,  are  now  the  streets  of  populous  cities.  Man 
leaves  the  woods  and  the  mountains  and  establishes 
himself  on  the  plain.  The  beginnings  of  civilization, 
the  dawn  of  human  liberty,  of  enlightenment,  and  of 
genuine  knowledge,  has  arisen. 

In  such  a  group,  bound  together,  as  it  is,  by  the 
immovable  foundation  of  its  site,  every  new  idea, 
every  new  utility  at  once  becomes  social.  Fresh 
wants  are  satisfied  by  fresh  creations,  and  the  environ- 
ment of  wealth  waxes  in  quantity  and  multiplies  in 
variety,  producing  still  newer  wants  to  be  met  by  new 
creations  without  end.  In  response  to  the  action  of 
accumulating  wealth,  the  thought-life  of  the  group  — 
its  mental  and  moral  nature  —  sways  this  way  and 
that,  broadening  here,  deepening  there,  flowing  for- 
ward as  fast  as  may  be  to  adjust  itself  to  the  civilizing 


v  THE   INCREMENT  OF   PSYCHIC  CAPACITY          183 

forces  set  up  in  motion  by  the  growing  and  convolv- 
ing surroundings  which  it  builds  around  itself  and  in 
which  it  exists. 

An  unit  in  this  complex  mass,  the  individual  finds 
that  by  the  pressure  of  his  fellow-individuals  the 
circle  of  his  liberty  is  constantly  widened  in  one  way 
while  it  is  constantly  narrowed  in  another.  If  he  is 
forced  to  think  of  the  rights  of  others,  he  is  no  less 
firmly  established  in  the  rights  that  are  his  own.  If 
he  may  not  take  from  another,  others  may  not  take 
from  him.  If  he  may  not  slay  his  fellow,  he  is  left 
free  to  reproduce  and  rear  his  offspring  in  peace.  If 
he  may  not  openly  rob  the  weaker  man  of  his  posses- 
sions, he  is  safe  in  the  retention  of  things  he  has 
already  won.  He  finds,  too,  that  by  his  grace  of 
unitship,  he  is  benefited  by  innumerable  comforts 
which  are  seen  to  spring  up  directly  from  the  social 
code  which  is  forced  upon  him.  The  liberty  he  sur- 
renders is  vastly  outweighed  by  the  new  liberty  he  is 
given  in  exchange.  He  perceives  by  experience 
that  the  social  fabric  of  which  he  is  compelled  to  be 
a  builder  is,  by  its  very  nature,  a  shelter  and  a  protec- 
tion for  his  own  head.  He  learns  more  and  more 
the  force  of  the  truth  that  as  a  member  of  society  he 
is  everything,  and  that  without  society  he  is  nothing. 
He  sees  that  his  want  is  the  want  of  all;  that  a 
wrong  to  him  is  a  wrong  to  all ;  and  upon  this  percep- 
tion of  a  truth  founded  upon  selfish  purpose  and  self- 
ish weal,  the  importance  of  the  group  grows  upon  his 
mind,  while  his  own  importance  seems  to  take  a 
secondary  place. 

In  this  way  the  individual  discovers  that  the  idea 
of  the  group  is  inseparably  bound  up  with  the  idea 


1 84  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

of  self.  He  perceives  that  if  he  himself  is  to  live 
amply,  the  group  must  live  amply  first.  And  this 
conscious  paramountcy  of  the  group,  affecting  all 
individuals  alike,  issues  into  social  growth  producing 
two  social  instruments,  or  organs.  One  of  these  is 
the  fighting  organ,  or  army,  designed  to  protect  the 
group  from  external  danger.  The  other  instrument 
arises  from  the  need  of  internal  peace  —  for  the  group 
is  threatened,  too,  with  danger  from  within  itself. 
This  organ  of  internal  defence  is  called  government. 
It  stands  between  individuals  in  dispute,  and  enforces 
its  decisions  with  the  fighting  machine  primarily  organ- 
ized to  defend  the  group  from  external  attack. 

So  it  is  that  government,  after  the  group  is  estab- 
lished on  the  fixed  site,  expands  in  a  degree  impos- 
sible to  the  wandering  tribe.  Law  and  order  emerge, 
impregnable  and  implacable,  from  what  was  a  mere 
rudiment  in  the  savage  state.  As  wealth  accumulates 
around  the  group,  social  motion  settles  down  into 
deep  grooves  in  which  it  runs  with  irresistible  power. 
Individuals,  classes  of  individuals,  the  group  itself, 
are  drawn  forward  by  forces  of  unalterable  and  in- 
evitable regularity.  At  the  source  of  the  motion 
are  the  springs  of  human  hope,  human  hunger,  and 
human  love.  Upon  the  surface  of  the  stream  are  the 
billows  and  the  eddies,  the  rapids  and  the  cataracts 
of  crime,  of  religion,  of  revolution. 

Upon  a  survey  of  these  facts  are  we  not  led  to  the 
conviction  that  human  history  may  be  analyzed  into 
the  simple  elements  we  have  here  described  ?  Given 
a  man,  and  you  have  the  unit  of  which  human  society 
is  made  up.  Take  him  from  whatever  company  you 
please,  in  times  past  or  in  times  present;  let  him 


v  THE   INCREMENT   OF   PSYCHIC   CAPACITY          185 

come  from  the  Arctics  or  from  Fiji,  from  London  or 
from  Pekin  ;  cover  him  over  with  the  spoils  of  a  Solo- 
mon, or  strip  him  bare  to  the  black  hide  of  a  Zulu ; 
give  him  the  brain  of  a  Bacon  or  the  misty  intellect  of 
the  Bushman  ;  let  him  dine  in  state  or  gnaw  at  the 
charred  flesh  of  the  beast  he  has  just  slaughtered; 
place  him  in  whatever  light  you  will,  and  examine 
into  his  structure  as  nearly  as  your  wit  can  fathom 
or  your  eye  can  reach,  and  you  will  find  him  like  all 
other  men  in  every  essential  attribute  of  his  being. 

If  we  know  the  man  by  himself,  we  have  the  basis 
of  a  knowledge  of  the  man  as  he  comes  into  conflict 
with  others  of  his  kind,  and  we  are  warranted  in 
drawing  no  conclusion  concerning  social  action  which 
does  not  find  its  premise  in  the  action  of  the  individ- 
ual. The  elements  of  individual  action  are  found  in 
the  forces  moving  the  man  to  eat  and  to  multiply  his 
kind.  The  elements  of  social  action  are  these  indi- 
vidual forces  fused  together.  Wealth  supplies  the 
means  for  the  satisfaction  of  the  basic  desires.  Upon 
the  increase  of  wealth  depends  the  increase  of  capac- 
ity for  its  use.  But  increase  of  wealth  is  made  cer- 
tain by  a  multiplication  of  men  in  a  fixed  place.  And 
this  interaction  of  capacity  and  wealth  are  the  founda- 
tions upon  which  human  society  rests  and  the  only 
foundations  conceivable.  Upon  these  foundations 
have  arisen  the  civilizations  of  the  past,  and  upon 
them  must  arise  the  civilizations  that  are  yet  to  come. 
But  the  structure  is  yet  building,  and  many  are  the 
complex  characters  it  assumes  as  it  grows  in  function 
and  substance  and  power. 

Fixed  upon  the  soil  of  Europe  are  many  forms  of 
social  life,  from  England  with  its  magnificent  intel- 


1 86  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

lect  and  wealth  in  the  West,  to  Russia  and  Turkey 
with  their  ignorance  and  poverty  in  the  East.  In 
America,  the  United  States,  rich  and  free,  trenches 
on  Mexico,  squalid  and  superstitious.  China  and 
India,  those  vast  families  of  groups,  fill  up  the  land 
of  Asia.  In  the  remote  past,  beyond  the  boundary 
lines  of  history,  and  even  beyond  the  grasp  of  ethni- 
cal science,  the  progenitors  of  the  men  of  to-day 
appeared  upon  the  earth  as  evolutions  from  ancestors 
still  more  remote.  From  a  few  places  these  ancient 
ancestors  spread  themselves  slowly  over  habitable 
lands  by  means  of  the  discoveries  which  gave  them 
artificial  fire  and  agriculture  in  its  simplest  form. 
True  agriculture  endowed  some  of  the  wanderers 
with  that  power  over  nature  which  forced  them  to 
live  in  a  fixed  locality ;  and  these  latter  groups  have 
developed  into  the  nations  or  the  political  aggre- 
gates we  now  see.  The  dominant  civilizations  are 
the  forms  of  political  life  which  have  triumphed  in 
the  great  struggle  for  social  existence.  But  domi- 
nant civilizations  are  the  very  groups  which  are  now 
most  rapidly  changing  their  forms.  They  are  evolv- 
ing and  convolving  under  the  play  of  the  forces 
which  called  them  into  being  and  marked  them  off 
from  the  wandering  tribes  and  races  out  of  which 
they  came.  Let  us  attempt  to  understand  the  evolu- 
tion and  the  convolution  as  they  are  now  going  on, 
not  in  one  group,  but  in  all.  To  do  this  let  us  with- 
draw for  a  moment  from  the  contemplation  of  man, 
and  regard  the  working  of  social  forces  as  they  are 
found  elsewhere  in  nature. 

In  following  this  procedure  we  are  only  clinging 
to  the  method  implied  in  the  earlier  chapters  of  this 


v  THE   INCREMENT   OF   PSYCHIC   CAPACITY          187 

work ;  and  we  believe  that  the  soundness  of  the 
method  will  commend  itself  to  the  reader,  when  he 
reflects  that  the  meaning  of  a  particular  phenomenon 
is  better  understood  when  the  general  law  of  which 
it  is  a  manifestation  is  mastered  and  defined.  We 
can  better  understand  the  social  evolution  of  man 
when  we  first  are  led  to  understand  the  laws  of  social 
existence  in  general ;  and  it  is  to  these  laws  we  must 
invite  the  reader  to  turn  his  attention. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    INCREMENT    AND    THE    SOCIAL    SCALE 

WHEN  we  look  upon  the  life  of  a  nation  as  the 
functioning  of  a  huge  organism,  the  various  parts  of 
which  are  held  together  by  mental  forces,  we  regard 
it  from  a  distinctly  advantageous  point  of  view.  In 
doing  so  we  not  only  enhance  our  conceptions  of 
social  energy  and  impart  to  them  an  added  charm, 
but  we  are  also  studying  society  with  rational  and 
true  ideas  of  its  movements. 

It  is  clear  that  the  activities  of  a  great  and  com- 
plex group  of  men  are  directly  the  result  of  the 
thought-life  of  its  individuals.  Customs  and  institu- 
tions, national  habits  and  associations,  trade  and 
industry  are  the  outgrowth  purely  of  the  mental  life 
and  character  of  men.  Governments  are  held  to- 
gether by  the  thoughts  —  the  ideas  —  of  their  peoples. 
Social  life  is  thus  seen  to  evolve  from  mental  life. 

How  true  is  this  profound  fact  will  be  seen  when 
we  reflect  that  it  is  the  individual  wants  of  men  which 
create  the  vast  systems  of  law  and  industry  seen 
everywhere  in  civilization.  The  life  of  any  nation 
merely  reflects  the  mental  energies  of  its  individual 
members.  In  this  fact  consists  the  difference  be- 
tween one  group  of  men  and  another.  If  the  indi- 
viduals of  a  group  have  many  and  varied  desires,  the 

188 


CHAP,  vi     THE  INCREMENT  AND   SOCIAL  SCALE  189 

activities  of  the  whole  group  will  be  manifold  and 
various  in  just  that  proportion.  If  the  desires  of  the 
individuals  be  simple,  the  group-life  will  be  simple. 
In  a  prosperous  and  civilized  community  men  desire 
books,  costly  furniture,  musical  instruments,  and  a 
thousand  things  not  in  demand  with  a  poor  or  less 
cultured  community.  The  group-life  of  the  civilized 
men  will  therefore  be  more  complex,  more  energetic, 
more  productive  of  wealth,  than  that  of  the  group 
whose  individuals  have  comparatively  few  wants. 
In  the  United  States,  or  in  France,  there  is  hence 
found  a  most  complicated  machinery  of  industry, 
and  a  national  life  altogether  different  from  that  of 
a  group  composed  of  African  savages  who,  by  com- 
parison, have  a  thought-life  that  is  very  simple.  The 
civilized  group  is  ruled  by  law  and  order  because, 
without  law  and  order,  the  individual  could  not  have 
his  wants  satisfied  or  exist  in  the  free  and  ample 
sphere  he  loves. 

The  truth  we  have  here  stated  might  appear  to  be 
applicable  in  a  special  way  to  human  societies.  Yet 
it  is  really  a  general  fact,  pertaining  not  alone  to 
social  life  but  to  individual  living  creatures  of  every 
kind.  The  bodily  functions  of  a  man,  for  example, 
are  more  complex  than  those  of  a  fish  because  the 
organs  of  a  man's  body  are  more  numerous  and 
more  varied  than  those  of  the  fish.  We  can  go 
farther  still,  and  with  perfect  and  obvious  truth,  we 
can  say  that  one  artificial  machine  is  more  complex 
than  another  because  of  the  fact  that  its  parts  are 
more  numerous  and  their  functions  correspondingly 
more  manifold.  Thus,  if  we  assert,  in  a  general  way, 
that  the  complexity  of  anything  is  determined  by 


190  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

the  number  and  complexity  of  its  parts,  we  will  be 
only  asserting  a  general  truth  obviously  applying  to 
inanimate  things  of  every  kind,  to  living  things  taken 
in  their  individuality,  and  to  groups  of  living  things 
associated  together  for  common  and  general  ends. 

It  may  be  considered  somewhat  difficult  to  find  an 
exception  to  this  generic  law  of  existence.  It  would 
seem  to  be  a  necessary  truth  that  the  united  life  of 
a  group  of  creatures,  such  as  men,  would  always  be 
more  complex  than  of  a  group  of  creatures  much 
lower  than  man  in  the  scale  of  thought-power.  If 
the  whole  can  be  no  more  than  the  sum  of  its  parts, 
then  a  number  of  men,  with  their  complex  brains  and 
varied  desires,  should  unite  in  a  social  organism  very 
complex  indeed  as  compared  with  that  of  creatures 
far  lower  than  man  in  the  graduating  forms  of  bodily 
and  mental  existence. 

But  forceful  as  this  conclusion  may  appear,  sound 
as  it  may  seem  to  us  when  we  consider  it  as  an 
aspect  of  the  general  truth  we  have  defined,  yet  it 
is  utterly  false  in  fact.  There  are  groups  of  animals 
very  much  lower  than  man,  so  far  as  intellect  is  con- 
cerned, that  are  yet  developed  in  a  social  way  far 
above  and  beyond  the  state  of  certain  savage  groups 
of  men. 

If  we  compare  the  anatomy  of  a  honey-bee  with 
that  of  a  man,  we  are  forced  to  admit  that  the  man 
is  in  every  respect  the  more  complex  creature.  His 
bodily  organs  and  functions,  his  wants,  his  desires, 
his  sensations,  his  capacity  to  suffer  or  enjoy  —  all 
are  proportionally  larger,  and  more  involved,  than 
similar  qualities  in  the  insect.  Yet  when  we  com- 
pare the  social  state  of  a  beehive  with  that  of  a 


vi          THE   INCREMENT  AND   THE   SOCIAL   SCALE       191 

group  of  Eskimos,  the  conclusion  is  forced  upon  us 
that  the  life  of  the  hive  is  complexity  itself  when  set 
against  the  simple  existence  of  a  tribe  of  Arboreans. 

Why  ?  It  should  occur  to  us  that  we  are  here  met 
with  a  fact  of  the  highest  importance  in  any  rational 
inquiry  into  the  causes  of  social  phenomena.  If  crea- 
tures of  such  very  simple  structure  as  honey-bees  can 
develop  a  social  group  of  such  high  order  as  to  make 
it  an  example  even  to  civilized  men,  there  must  be 
some  factor  of  social  growth  quite  independent  of  the 
character  of  animal  intelligence.  What  is  it  ? 

If  the  reader  turns  back  to  Chapter  IV,  he  will  find 
the  answer.  He  will  find  that  this  independent  factor 
of  social  life  lies  hidden  in  the  fundamental  law  of 
society  we  have  developed  in  our  discussion  of  the 
changing  environment  fixed  in  the  tmchanging  place. 

The  beginnings  of  social  growth  are  observed  in 
many  species  of  animals.  But  the  progress  of  that 
growth  is  arrested,  as  it  is  arrested  with  some  groups 
of  men,  by  the  absence  of  the  fixed  locality  needed 
for  its  development.  A  pack  of  wolves,  a  herd  of 
deer,  a  tribe  of  monkeys,  or  a  tribe  of  savage  men, 
lacks  only  permanency  of  place  to  cause  it  to  con- 
tinue the  social  growth  which  has  been  already  set 
up  with  tribal  association.  But  once  that  this  ine- 
quality is  removed ;  once  that  the  fixity  of  place  is 
secured,  the  social  growth  of  the  animals  involved 
will  depend  altogether  upon  the  quality  of  the  thought- 
life  of  the  units — upon  the  degree  to  which  the  brain 
of  the  race  has  been  developed.  Here  we  realize  the 
extreme  importance  of  the  principle  of  the  fixed  local- 
ity in  all  social  considerations.  It  is  this  power  over 
the  environment  which  has  determined  the  growth 


IQ2  THE   LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

of  all  communities ;  and  it  is  the  lack  of  this  power 
which  has  left  many  races  to  lag  behind,  or  to  suffer 
elimination  in  the  struggle  for  social  existence. 

This  principle,  then,  explains  the  fact  that  we  find 
social  development  of  a  comparatively  high  order  in 
species  with  a  nervous  apparatus  of  a  comparatively 
low  order.  If,  for  example,  we  compare  the  social 
state  of  a  community  of  bees  with  that  of  a  herd  of 
deer,  we  shall  find  that  the  former  is  much  higher 
than  the  latter.  Incomparably  so,  in  fact.  The 
nervous  system  of  the  bee  is  a  simple  thing  as  com- 
pared with  that  of  the  deer.  The  bee  can  hardly  be 
said  to  have  a  brain  at  all,  whereas  the  brain  of  the 
deer  is  very  like  that  of  a  man.  But  the  social  state 
of  the  bee  depends  altogether  on  the  power  of  the 
bee  community  to  live  in  an  unchanging  locality,  and 
the  social  consequences  of  that  power  are,  as  we  have 
seen,  tremendous.  In  just  the  degree  in  which  the  bee- 
group  has  this  power,  which  the  deer-group  has  not,  is 
its  social  structure  complex  and  strong,  and  better  fitted 
to  survive  as  a  group  in  the  struggle  for  social  existence. 

Mere  complexity  of  brain  or  nerve,  mere  motives 
of  hunger  and  sex  cannot  unite  living  creatures  into 
a  community.  It  is  only  when  these  motives  are 
found  to  be  better  served  by  common  action  than  by 
individual  action  that  social  life  arises  out  of  mental 
life ;  and  furthermore  it  is  only  when  common  ends 
are  found  to  be  best  served  by  life  in  a  permanently 
fixed  place,  that  social  life  and  growth  become  pro- 
gressive. But  once  that  this  relation  has  been  discov- 
ered, the  complexity  of  the  social  growth  consequent 
upon  it  will  depend  altogether  upon  the  complexity 
of  the  thought-life  of  the  animal. 


VI          THE  INCREMENT   AND   THE   SOCIAL   SCALE       193 

In  discussing  social  growth  we  must,  therefore, 
place  man  where  he  belongs  under  the  general  laws 
of  life.  As  an  animal,  he  is  limited  by  the  same 
motives  of  hunger  and  propagation  that  limit  the 
world  of  life  at  large.  As  a  social  animal,  he  cannot 
be  set  apart  from  that  world  and  considered  as  some- 
thing unique  among  the  social  groups  which  have 
arisen  around  him.  His  social  life  is  produced  and 
developed  by  the  play  of  forces  from  which  he  can- 
not escape.  If  his  body  —  with  its  natural  desires 
and  needs — is  the  product  of  an  evolution  over  which 
he  has  had  no  control,  there  is  no  reason  for  believing 
that  the  law  of  his  social  life  is  any  exception  to  the 
law  that  binds  his  fellow-creatures  in  the  same  respect. 
It  will  not  be  asserted  that  the  human  brain  has  been 
developed  by  any  desire  of  man's  to  be  possessed  of 
an  organ  like  the  brain.  Man's  desires  had  nothing 
to  do  with  the  development  of  his  lungs  or  his  stomach. 
No  more  had  those  desires  to  do  with  the  growth  of 
his  nerves.  The  human  body  is  not  the  result  of  any 
design  on  the  part  of  the  developing  race  to  produce 
the  genus  homo.  The  brain  arose  out  of  the  vital 
structures  produced  by  natural  selection  and  pre- 
served and  developed  by  the  same  law. 

A  political  group  of  men  does  not  evolve  into 
a  form  different  from  that  evolved  by  a  bee-group 
because  of  any  fundamental  difference  in  the  laws  by 
which  both  groups  are  carried  forward.  These  laws  are 
precisely  the  same  in  both  instances.  Social  develop- 
ment is  essentially  an  identical  process  wherever  it  is 
to  be  found.  In  some  societies  it  has  been  carried 
farther  than  in  others.  But  that  is  all.  This  fact 
accounts  for  the  differences  existing  between  the 


194  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

various  civilizations  of  men  now  occupying  the  earth, 
and  for  the  various  stages  through  which  any  par- 
ticular group  or  civilization  has  passed  within  the 
compass  of  its  history. 

But  while  this  is  true,  there  is  a  secondary  factor 
of  social  growth,  the  need  for  which  has  probably 
occurred  to  the  reader.  Why  is  it  that  one  group  will 
develop  faster  than  another  when  both  groups  consist 
of  similar  individuals  ?  Why,  for  example,  will  social 
progress  advance  with  longer  strides  in  England  than 
in  Germany,  in  France  than  in  Austria,  in  the  United 
States  than  in  Spain,  in  honey-bees  than  in  hornets  ? 
Why  have  bees  been  able  to  produce  a  social  state 
more  complex  than  that  of  ants  or  of  wasps,  when  all 
of  these  genera  of  insects  are  physically  and  mentally 
much  the  same  ?  This  question  can  be  answered  by 
an  inquiry  into  the  relations  of  the  animal  to  the  en- 
vironment. The  brain  of  an  ape  is  far  better  suited  to 
high  social  development  than  are  the  nerve  centres  of 
the  bee  or  the  ant.  But  the  social  life  of  the  insect 
is  higher  than  that  of  the  pithecoid  because  of  the 
permanency  of  the  insect's  habitation.  We  may 
now  ask  why  is  it  that  the  insect  has  discovered  its 
power  over  the  environment  while  the  ape  has  not. 

We  know  that  social  organization,  however  low,  is 
produced  by  natural  selection ;  as  in  the  case  of  the 
springbok,  the  buffalo,  the  wolf,  and  many  others. 
In  these  instances  social  organization  arises  from  the 
passive  adaptation  of  the  organism  to  the  environment. 
The  mere  color  of  an  animal  causes  it  to  survive  when 
a  large  number  of  the  species  remain  together;  or  a 
habit  of  signalling,  when  danger  threatens,  may  act 
so  as  to  preserve  the  groups  possessing  it,  while  those 


vi          THE   INCREMENT  AND  THE   SOCIAL   SCALE       195 

without  it  are  eliminated.  Gregariousness  is  thus  pro- 
duced by  natural  selection.  But  we  should  not  look  for 
the  production  of  this  social  thought-life  in  any  cir- 
cumstances which  did  not  especially  favor  the  group 
which  had  developed  it.  In  some  instances  the  social 
state,  however  produced,  might  result  in  elimination 
of  the  race.  Many  known  races  have  been  rendered 
extinct  by  man  because  of  their  social  character. 

Association,  therefore,  would  not  alone  insure  the 
preservation  of  any  group  unless  the  environment 
favored  social  groups.  Now,  the  relations  of  the  or- 
ganism to  the  environment  are  infinite  in  number. 
But  of  this  vast  multitude  of  possible  causes  very  few 
operate  so  as  to  produce  a  social  from  a  non-social 
state.  One  of  these  causes  is  the  accidental  percep- 
tion of  new  relations  between  things,  and  between 
things  and  the  organism  itself.  It  was  thus  that  men 
accidentally  discovered  fire,  and  were  led  to  its  useful 
reproduction  by  the  familiar  law  that  pleasurable  sen- 
sations are  repeated.  In  the  same  way  the  bee  dis- 
covered that  it  could  utilize  its  bodily  organs  for 
creating  a  fixed  habitation.  The  ape  discovered  neither 
the  one  nor  the  other.  Successive  changes  in  the  en- 
vironment of  the  ape,  and  in  his  own  consciousness, 
have  not  converged  to  the  ends  to  which  have  con- 
verged the  changes  in  the  surroundings  and  the 
minds  of  men  and  of  bees.  Yet  it  is  these  new  per- 
ceptions, determined  by  the  life  of  the  organism  in 
the  environment,  that  have  led  the  bee  and  the  man 
in  one  direction,  while  the  ape  remains  in  statu. 
The  progress  of  the  ape,  and  of  other  animals  low  in 
the  social  scale,  is  thus  stopped  at  its  source  by  a 
simple  failure  to  place  themselves  in  that  fundamental 


196  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

relation  to  wealth  by  which  social  progress  is  made 
possible. 

But  the  self-same  truth  is  applicable  to  groups 
of  similar  individuals.  Some  groups  have  made  dis- 
coveries of  new  utilities  and  new  power  over  nature 
which  other  groups,  composed  of  similar  individuals, 
failed  to  find.  Thus  it  is  that  honey-bees  have  more 
highly  organized  societies  and  far  more  efficient 
methods  of  social  life  than  have  ants  or  hornets, 
although  these  three  genera  of  insects  are  much  the 
same  in  their  general  structure.  This  is  no  less  true 
of  men.  Berlin  and  Paris  are  cities  of  vast  and  be- 
wildering utilities  as  compared  with  Pekin  and  Tehe- 
ran. Why  ?  Only  because  Europeans  have  dis- 
covered new  uses  for  their  hands  while  the  Chinese 
and  Persians  have  not.  Chinese  and  Europeans  are 
men,  alike  in  all  essential  particulars ;  but  the  contact 
of  the  latter  with  the  things  about  them  has  increased 
the  sum  of  the  European's  knowledge,  while  similar 
contact  has  not  done  the  same  for  the  Chinese  and 
the  Persian.  New  uses  have  been  found  for  familiar 
objects  in  Europe.  They  have  not  been  found  in 
China  and  Persia.  That  is  all. 

Still,  it  may  be  asked,  why  cannot  the  ape  be  taught 
the  use  of  things  which  are  found  beneficial  in  the 
hands  of  man  ?  For  the  same  reason,  we  may  reply, 
that  a  full-grown  man  cannot  be  taught  to  exist  under 
water  like  a  fish.  The  man's  capacity  for  the  use  of 
the  environment  in  which  he  lives  is  the  product  of 
long  ages  of  evolution.  One  succession  of  causes 
and  effects  produced  the  brain  of  man ;  another  pro- 
duced the  brain  of  the  anthropoid.  Both  may  have 
sprung  from  the  same  stock ;  but  they  have  developed 


vi          THE  INCREMENT  AND   THE   SOCIAL   SCALE       197 

in  different  directions.  If  of  two  infants,  born  of 
the  same  mother,  one  be  brought  up  in  China  and 
the  other  in  France,  the  first  will  speak  Chinese  and  the 
other  will  speak  French.  In  old  age  the  Chinese-bred 
child  might  learn  a  little  French  with  difficulty,  and 
vice  versa.  But,  as  the  environment  of  the  one  was 
Chinese,  and  that  of  the  other  French,  neither  can 
use  the  language  of  the  other  save  in  the  smallest 
quantity  and  in  the  crudest  way.  So,  while  we  may 
teach  the  ape  to  use  the  instruments  of  the  man  — 
and  this  is  done  —  it  can  only  be  done  in  quantities 
that  are  very  insignificant.  The  brain  of  a  race  of 
apes  might  be  cultivated  by  artificial  selection ;  but  that 
would  be  an  experiment  interesting  in  theory  only. 

Our  secondary  factor  of  social  evolution  is  hence 
found  to  lie  in  the  constantly  enlarging  number  of 
new  relations  between  the  group  and  the  environment 
—  relations  produced  by  experience  which,  when 
classified  by  man,  is  called  science,  art,  and  invention. 
But  the  progress  of  science  and  invention  is  due  only 
to  the  multiplication  of  ideas  flowing  out  of  the  mul- 
tiplying wealth  created  by  the  multiplying  wants  and 
the  increasing  capacities  of  the  units  and  of  the  mass. 

In  discussing  the  division  of  wealth  brought  about 
by  the  effect  of  moral  sentiment  upon  the  incremental 
capacity,  we  noted  that  moral  thought  was  produced 
by  the  common  needs  of  men.  We  observed  that 
public  property  originated  in  the  general  wants  of 
men,  and  that  once  having  arisen,  it  was  permanently 
maintained  by  the  moral  sense  of  all.  If  we  now 
suppose  that  a  rapidly  growing  group,  having  already 
developed  these  moral  notions,  should  grow  too  large 
for  the  site  upon  which  it  lived,  and  should  throw  off 


198  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

a  portion  of  its  units  into  another  place,  how  would 
the  new  group,  or  colony,  conduct  itself  ?  Experience 
supplies  an  answer  to  the  question.  With  men,  the 
colony-group  begins  to  build  an  environment  very 
like  that  of  its  group-ancestor.  There  are  the  same 
kinds  of  public  and  private  property  as  -in  the  older 
group.  But,  as  was  noted  in  Chapters  III  and  IV, 
the  new  group  begins  at  once  to  diverge  and,  in  a 
comparatively  short  time,  presents  many  new  social 
characters  of  its  own  —  in  short,  we  have  a  new  social 
species.  This  seems  to  be  an  inevitable  rule  with 
colonies  of  men.  However  stable  may  be  the  institu- 
tions of  the  parent-group,  the  colony  at  once  leaps  on 
in  advance  of  its  parent  or  parents,  and  a  new  kind 
of  society  is  produced. 

But  this  is  not  at  all  the  truth  with  many  social 
animals  other  than  man.  With  hive-bees,  for  ex- 
ample, no  new  social  forms  are  ever  developed.  The 
colony  is  precisely  like  its  parent.  New  groups  and 
old  groups  are  indistinguishable  from  one  another. 
All  are  precisely  alike.  Each  has  exactly  the  same 
social  characters  as  the  others.  New  environments 
are  constructed  in  absolute  duplication  of  the  old. 
The  same  mental  and  physical  life  is  found  in  all. 
Beehives  present  this  phenomenon  of  perfect  equi- 
librium nowhere  observed  among  societies  of  men. 
How  can  we  account  for  this  important  fact  ?  Must 
we,  indeed,  abandon  our  assumption  that  human 
social  life  is  no  different  in  its  essential  method  of 
growth  from  the  social  life  of  other  sentient  creatures  ? 
Is  it  the  moral  element  in  man  which  causes  human 
groups  to  flow  forwards  in  social  evolution  while  that 
evolution  in  the  bee  is  at  a  dead  level  ? 


vi          THE   INCREMENT  AND  THE   SOCIAL   SCALE       199 

If  we  go  back  to  our  conception  of  basic  forces  and 
functions,  we  shall  find  an  explanation  of  this  impor- 
tant difference  between  man  and  bee,  and  between 
the  bee  and  other  animals  of  a  social  kind.  The  pur- 
pose of  a  bee-group  is  much  the  same  as  that  of  a 
man-group.  Both  are  held  together  by  the  needs  of 
nutrition  and  propagation.  Hence  it  should  appear 
that  their  methods  of  growth  should  be  strikingly 
similar.  Is  it  possible  that  we  shall  find  in  the  social 
life  of  the  bee  some  large  and  conspicuous  fact  which 
will  perfectly  account  for  this  absolute  cessation  of 
social  development  ?  And  is  it  possible  that  when 
we  find  that  fact  we  shall  light  at  the  same  time  upon 
the  basic  cause  of  the  fact  that  human  social  evolu- 
tion continues  to  go  forward  ? 

The  conspicuous  fact  we  are  looking  for  appears  in 
the  very  profound  difference  that  exists  in  the  manner 
by  which  bee  and  man  reproduce  their  kind.  With 
bees  the  maintenance  of  the  race  depends  upon  a  very 
few  individuals.  A  queen-bee  deposits  about  two 
thousand  eggs  a  day,  during  the  season,  and  this 
number  is  more  than  sufficient  to  prevent  the  death 
of  the  community.  It  is  plain  that  no  hive  could 
exist,  that  no  social  group  could  develop  with  fixed 
customs  and  institutions  such  as  bees  have,  if  all  of 
the  females  were  left  free  to  propagate  at  this  tre- 
mendous rate.  But  the  life  of  the  group  is  main- 
tained by  checking  the  fertility  of  all  but  a  few  of  the 
entire  number  of  the  population.  The  arrest  of  the 
reproductive  functions  in  the  neuter  bee  was  the  one 
condition  making  it  possible  for  a  group  to  build  habi- 
tations of  a  complex  kind  in  an  unchanging  locality. 

But  even  with  this  check  upon  numbers,  bees  mul- 


200  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

tiply  so  rapidly  that  social  propagation  is  frequently 
necessary.  All  that  is  needed  to  produce  a  new  hive 
is  that  a  considerable  part  of  the  old  society  shall  find 
a  place  in  which  to  build  an  environment  precisely 
like  the  old.  The  physical  and  moral  wants  and 
nature  of  the  new  group  are  in  no  wise  changed  after 
the  parturition.  The  neuters  cannot  redevelop  their 
arrested  functions,  and  the  group  must  perish  if  it 
cannot  find  a  suitable  place  upon  which  to  build  its 
new  home.  It  will  not  be  held  that  the  social  state 
of  bees  was  produced  by  any  but  natural  causes.  All 
the  perfected  social  apparatus  observed  in  these  in- 
sects has  been  created  by  natural  selection.  We  need 
hardly  argue  this  point.  The  cause  which  made  the 
bee  social  is  identical  with  that  which  did  the  same 
thing  for  man.  This  cause  is  found  in  the  family  and 
in  the  rearing  of  young.  But  with  man  the  social 
state  is  brought  about  by  a  multiplication  of  numbers, 
whereas  with  bees  it  depends  upon  the  very  reverse 
fact.  Bees  discovered  that  food  of  a  certain  kind 
placed  a  limit  upon  fertility.  This  food,  when  the 
discovery  was  made,  was  the  only  kind  available  for 
the  majority  of  the  group.  But  once  that  the  insect 
became  aware  of  this  important  fact,  the  knowledge 
was  ever  afterward  used  to  regulate  population.  It 
had  so  to  be  used  if  the  group  was  to  live.  And  as 
the  utmost  limit  upon  fertility  was  needed  to  safe- 
guard the  existence  of  the  group,  all  but  a  few  of 
the  females  were  fed  upon  the  substance  which  held 
propagation  down  to  the  lowest  possible  limit.  The 
danger  that  the  community  might  break  up  from 
want  of  reproducers  was  perfectly  averted  by  the 
multiplicity  of  the  young,  any  one  of  which  could 


vi          THE   INCREMENT   AND   THE   SOCIAL   SCALE      2OI 

be  developed  into  a  parent  by  a  simple  change  of 
food. 

The  life  of  a  bee  is  comparatively  short,  and  its 
nervous  system  very  simple.  Therefore  the  social 
growth  of  the  group  would  be  comparatively  rapid. 
The  desires  of  a  bee  are  easily  satisfied.  Therefore 
its  economic  life  and  its  moral  sense  are  quickly 
brought  into  equilibrium.  Free  propagation  would 
be  very  repugnant  to  the  insect-community  because 
free  propagation  would  mean  social  pain.  Those 
bee-groups  which  could  best  control  their  numbers 
would  most  readily  survive.  In  the  surviving  groups 
there  would  be  perfect  freedom  for  at  least  one  of 
the  basic  functions ;  and  the  other  basic  function 
would  be  effaced  from  all  but  a  few  individuals.  By 
this  effacement  alone  would  the  prosperous  life  of  the 
group  be  secured,  and  perfect  freedom  for  social  prop- 
agation set  up  and  maintained. 

There  is  yet  another  important  fact  to  be  noted 
before  we  pass  on  to  the  human  part  of  our  com- 
parison. It  is  this :  All  the  social  characters  of  the 
bee-community  are  acquired.  The  arrest  of  the  repro- 
ductive organs,  the  utilization  of  wax  in  building 
the  habitat,  the  creation  of  a  new  queen  by  changing 
the  food  of  the  nascent  young ;  the  slaughter  of  the 
drones  ;  the  mortal  combats  of  rival  queens  ;  in  a  word, 
the  entire  assemblage  of  characters  which  mark  the 
group,  are  the  products  of  the  environment  upon 
the  plastic  social  structure,  and  of  the  reactions  of 
the  group  on  its  environment  —  the  process  which  we 
have  called  incrementation.  What  name  shall  we 
give  these  characters  if  not  social  instinct  f  Whether 
instinct  be  produced  by  the  transmission  of  acquired 


202  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

characters,  or  whether  it  be  the  product  of  natural 
selection  through  variation,  need  not  concern  us  here. 
With  bees,  the  swarm,  or  colony-group,  is  propagated 
by  simple  self-division,  and  the  new  group  carries 
over  to  the  new  environment  all  the  characters  of 
the  parent. 

We  have  no  desire  to  raise  the  question  of  the 
origin  of  instinct.  But  we  may  remark,  in  passing, 
that  the  dividing  line  between  reason  and  instinct  is 
very  fine  in  the  bee.  The  mental  life  of  the  bee  is 
relatively  as  rational  as  that  of  man.  It  is  sheer  idle- 
ness to  argue  as  if  man  were  the  only  animal  which 
reasons  from  cause  to  effect.  We  can  only  commis- 
erate the  very  backward  state  of  popular  knowledge 
upon  this  subject.  Superstition  and  ignorance,  living 
through  long  ages,  have  so  clouded  the  intellect  of 
even  cultured  persons  that  popular  speech  is  no  more 
than  a  mass  of  words  to  almost  every  one  of  which 
is  attached  a  false  meaning.  The  majority  cannot 
understand  that  man  differs  from  other  animals  only 
in  degree.  Man,  in  the  fatuous  conceit  of  his  own 
ignorance,  has  set  himself  up  on  a  pedestal  of  pride 
from  which  centuries  of  education  have  failed  to  dis- 
lodge him.  One  would  conceive  that  the  brutal  char- 
acter of  most  men  should  have  taught  them  that  they 
are  at  least  second  cousins  of  their  poorer  fellow- 
creatures,  the  beasts.  But  only  a  few  will  be  found 
to  admit  the  force  of  the  fact.  Why  bandy  words, 
then,  with  him  who,  in  supreme  ignorance  of  the 
simplest  process  going  on  within  his  own  body,  con- 
ceives that  he  and  his  kind  are  a  sort  of  divine  being, 
when  they  are  merely  a  type  of  a  stronger  and  more 
sensitive  brute  ? 


vi          THE   INCREMENT  AND   THE   SOCIAL   SCALE      203 

We  can  understand  how  the  savage  can  bow  before 
his  fetich,  and  how  the  boor  and  the  illiterate  can 
cling  to  superstitions  which  have  come  down  to  them 
from  their  ancestors.  We  can  understand  also  how 
more  enlightened  men  still  entertain  the  most  extrava- 
gantly false  conceits  of  the  importance  of  the  human 
kind  in  the  scheme  of  creation.  But  we  cannot  under- 
take to  force  upon  such  enlightened  men  an  under- 
standing of  scientific  truths  the  very  elements  of 
which  are  unknown  to  them.  When,  therefore,  we 
say  that  bees  have  moral  instincts  and  are  as  rational, 
in  degree,  as  are  men,  we  must  not  be  asked  to  prove 
the  assertion  for  the  benefit  of  the  world  at  large.  It 
is  a  truth  somewhat  undemonstrable  to  intellects  which 
have  a  very  inadequate  conception  of  the  function  of 
the  blood,  the  structure  of  the  brain,  and  that  great 
wealth  of  demonstrated  fact  with  which  the  science 
of  biology  has  to  do. 

Yet  the  meanest  intellect  or  the  most  fatuous 
worshipper  of  man  will  admit  that  the  actions  of  a 
group  of  bees  are  as  really  rational  as  those  of  the 
human  kind.  By  means  of  scouts  a  suitable  location 
for  a  new  home  is  discovered.  The  discovery  is  com- 
municated to  the  swarm,  which  forthwith  proceeds  to 
emigrate  from  the  vicinity  of  the  hive.  It  should  be 
somewhat  difficult  to  prove  that  by  "  instinct "  alone, 
and  never  by  "reason,"  the  bees  know  that  a  new 
colony  is  forthcoming;  that  "instinct"  compels  one 
of  them,  or  a  number,  to  search  for  a  new  site ;  that 
instinct  enables  the  scout  to  judge  of  the  adaptability 
of  the  site  to  the  purpose  desired ;  that  it  is  instinct 
which  leads  the  scout  to  communicate  its  discovery  to 
the  swarm,  and  that  it  is  by  instinct  the  swarm  follows. 


204  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

It  is  indifferent  by  what  term  we  call  the  mental  action 
by  which  those  things  are  accomplished.  But  if  similar 
conduct  be  rational  vfaKQ.  it  is  men  that  are  concerned, 
it  is  no  less  rational  with  bees. 

A  group  of  men  seeking  a  new  habitat  follow  pre- 
cisely the  same  rules  of  action.  And  when  it  arrives 
in  the  new  locality  it  does  not  conduct  itself  with 
striking  variation  from  the  manner  of  the  group  of 
which  it  was  once  a  part.  It  builds  houses,  produces 
food,  and  establishes  institutions  of  a  kind  with  those 
of  its  parent.  But  the  difference  between  the  new 
bee-group  and  the  new  man-group  is  this :  the  man- 
group  diverges  from  its  parent,  whereas  the  bee-group 
does  not. 

And  why  is  this  the  fact  ?  Because  the  greatest 
good  of  the  bee-group  depends  upon  its  restriction  of 
population,  while  that  of  the  man-group  depends 
upon  the  expansion  of  population.  With  new  groups 
of  men  social  growth  is  facilitated,  not  stopped,  by 
increase  of  numbers.  If  the  life  of  the  bee-group  is 
threatened  by  such  increase,  the  life  of  the  human 
group  is  threatened  by  the  absence  of  increase ;  and 
this  fact  is  due  to  the  fundamental  difference  in  the 
method  by  which  the  organism  is  procreated.  Every 
fresh  addition  to  the  population  of  the  human  group 
enlarges  its  social  life  and  the  liberty  of  its  units. 
Increase  of  population  with  such  a  group  is  always 
associated  with  ideas  of  social  good  or  pleasure,  while 
any  addition  to  the  bee-group's  numbers  (save  that  of 
the  least  possible  quantity)  is  associated  with  ideas  of 
social  pain. 

Increase  of  population  in  human  groups  will  receive 
the  moral  approbation  of  man  as  long  as  population 


vi          THE   INCREMENT   AND   THE   SOCIAL   SCALE      205 

may  grow  without  danger  of  being  associated  with 
painful  experience.  The  increment  of  wealth  presses 
upon  the  increment  of  capacity  and  this,  in  turn, 
reacts  upon  the  environment,  ever  adding  to  wealth 
and  to  capacity,  and  ever  enlarging  the  social  and 
individual  life  of  the  community. 

But  as  soon  as  increase  of  population  checks  this 
interaction ;  as  soon  as  freedom  to  propagate  results 
in  pain  for  the  mass ;  as  soon  as  wealth  lags  in  the 
process  of  incrementation,  just  so  soon  does  the  pro- 
cess take  on  a  reverse  action.  The  human  group  is 
then  approaching  that  equilibrium  observed  in  groups 
of  bees.  Why,  then,  does  not  human  society  estab- 
lish that  equilibrium  by  means  of  artificial  suppres- 
sion ?  It  is  manifest  that  if  men  were  to  resort  to  a 
similar  method  of  checking  fertility  as  that  in  vogue 
among  bees,  the  balance  might  be  struck.  But  men 
have  not  discovered  such  method,  and  they  have  not 
sought  to  discover  it  —  at  least  for  this  purpose. 
The  reason  for  this  fact  is  very  clear.  Bee  popula- 
tion can  be  maintained  by  an  infinitesimal  part  of  the 
reproductive  apparatuses  of  the  group.  Prodigality 
of  offspring  is,  with  them,  an  evil  to  be  overcome 
at  all  hazards.  With  men  it  is  most  often  the 
reverse. 

It  is  this  difference  of  fertility  which  lies  at  the 
root  of  the  fact  that  groups  of  men  do  not  quickly 
reach  that  social  equilibrium  at  which  social  progress 
must  come  to  an  end,  and  in  which  shall  be  fulfilled 
the  ultimate  purpose  of  the  swiftly  flowing  stream 
of  human  social  life.  Our  theory  would  be  indeed 
incomplete  did  we  intend  to  dispose  of  the  subject 
here.  On  the  contrary,  this  very  matter  of  popula- 


206  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

tion  and  its  regulation  is  the  heart  of  the  business 
we  have  in  hand. 

Is  the  earth  to  be  so  overcrowded  with  human 
beings  that  the  only  hope  for  humanity  lies  in  pesti- 
lence, war,  famine,  and  the  other  horrors  of  history  ? 
Seeing  that  as  nations  prosper,  populations  increase, 
is  our  very  progress  destined  to  be  our  own  undoing  ? 
Will  men  be  forced  to  face  the  hideous  necessity  of 
deliberately  and  artificially  suppressing  the  increase 
in  the  number  of  our  race  ?  Are  we  to  look  forward 
to  a  state  of  things  when  civilized  men  shall  have 
become  so  dulled  in  sympathy  as  to  use  the  cruel 
and  ferocious  method  of  the  bee  in  order  that  they 
may  be  spared  the  more  horrible  alternative  of  indis- 
criminate slaughter  ? 

It  would  be  folly  to  attempt  a  rational  theory  of 
social  life  and  leave  out  these  stirring  and  mighty 
questions.  We  must  not  evade  them  or  cover  them 
up  with  an  impotent  agnosticism.  We  must  address 
ourselves  to  a  careful  examination  of  the  life  of 
society  and  find,  if  we  can,  the  nature  of  the  future 
of  the  human  race.  We  shrink  with  repugnance 
from  the  thought  that  the  man  of  the  future  must, 
in  the  very  nature  of  his  being,  become  a  monster 
without  sympathy  and  a  pessimist  without  hope.  If 
all  the  intellectual  progress  of  man  must  turn  out 
to  be  a  bridge  upon  which  he  is  marching  to  the 
destruction  of  his  own  high  ideals,  we  may  as  well 
drop  all  inquiry  and  cease  to  aspire.  This  is  the 
natural  conclusion  to  which  the  sympathetic  man 
must  come. 

But  it  is  the  conviction  of  the  author  of  this  book 
that  the  outlook  is  not  so  very  desperate  after  all. 


vi          THE  INCREMENT  AND   THE   SOCIAL   SCALE      2O/ 

He  is  convinced  that  the  human  race  is  not  destined 
for  either  war  or  pestilence.  He  is  satisfied  that  he 
understands  the  method  by  which  the  human  popula- 
tion of  the  earth  will  be  brought  to  an  equilibrium  in 
which  the  highest  liberty  of  the  individual,  in  his 
common  human  desires,  will  be  at  one  with  the  safety 
of  the  entire  race.  But  if  we  were  to  discuss  the 
regulation  of  human  population  at  this  point  we 
would  only  be  anticipating  our  conclusions.  We 
shall  discuss  it  in  its  proper  place.  The  conclusion 
to  which  we  shall  come  concerning  the  law  of  human 
population  depends  upon  several  conclusions  which 
flow  from  principles  developed  in  what  precedes. 
We  may,  however,  anticipate  this  much  — that  there 
is  a  method  by  which  the  number  of  the  human  race 
will  be  maintained  at  a  norm  above  which  it  may  rise 
and  below  which  it  may  fall :  a  mean  number  remain- 
ing the  same  from  age  to  age,  although  the  actual 
number  may  constantly  vary.  And  this  method,  we 
hope  to  show,  shall  in  no  wise  disturb  the  morals  and 
the  sympathies  of  any  one,  however  sensitive  or  acute. 

With  this  digression,  we  may  now  revert  to  our 
discussion  of  moral  ideas  concerned  with  propagation. 
A  numerous  proletary  is  always  necessary  for  the 
healthy  life  of  a  community.  For  this  reason  moral 
ideas  attaching  to  freedom  of  begetting  offspring  are 
very  strong.  The  liberty  of  rearing  a  family,  and 
freely  providing  for  its  maintenance,  is  inseparably 
associated  with  human  ideas  of  right.  Any  act 
which  interferes  with  that  liberty  is  condemned  as 
the  highest  wrong,  next  to  that  of  interfering  with  the 
life  of  the  individual  himself. 

It   will   be   obvious,  now,  that  if  we  classify  the 


2O8  THE   LEVEL   OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

social  instincts  of  bees  with  what  are  called  acquired 
characters,  there  will  be  need  for  doing  the  same 
thing  with  the  social  instincts  of  men.  In  this 
concept  is  involved  the  more  remote  concept  of 
right  and  wrong.  And  more  remotely  still  the 
concept  of  innate  ideas.  To  those  unfamiliar  with 
comparative  psychology  it  may  seem  an  undue  dis- 
regard of  man's  importance  to  say  that  the  sense 
of  right  and  wrong  observed  in  bee-groups  is  essen- 
tially the  same  as  the  same  phenomenon  among  men. 
The  repugnance  of  the  bee  to  any  but  the  smallest  pos- 
sible production  of  offspring  would  certainly  seem  to 
be  moral.  Man's  moral  sense  is  chiefly  concerned 
about  life  (with  its  functions)  and  about  property. 
This  social  motive  arises,  without  question,  from  the 
desirability  of  an  increase  in  population. 

But  moral  ideas  are  embedded  in  the  purely  physical 
surroundings  of  men  far  more  deeply  than  the  average 
person  believes ;  more  deeply  indeed,  than  most 
moralists  have  ever  dreamed  of.  How  deeply  they 
are  thus  embedded  will  appear,  if  we  permit  our- 
selves to  imagine  a  sudden  or  a  slow  change  in  the 
environment.  In  regions  remote  from  a  supply  of 
food  the  most  civilized  men  will  kill  and  eat  one  an- 
other without  moral  compunction.  Murder  and  man- 
eating  in  New  York  would  be  considered  the  most 
highly  immoral  conduct.  The  mere  thought  of  it 
is  the  most  repugnant  of  ideas  save  that  of  self- 
slaughter.  Yet  murder  and  man-eating  are  condoned 
when  practised  by  men  shipwrecked  at  sea  or  lost  in 
the  arctics.  What  produces  this  very  profound  change 
in  moral  ideas  ?  Nothing  whatever  but  a  change  of 
environment.  And  if  mere  change  of  surroundings 


vi          THE   INCREMENT   AND  THE   SOCIAL   SCALE      2OQ 

can  accomplish  that,  we  need  not  hesitate  to  admit 
that  other  changes,  less  violent  or  extreme,  can  alter 
moral  ideas  and  conduct  in  degrees  less  striking. 
When  considering  morality,  then,  we  should  not  be 
led  to  place  too  high  an  importance  on  the  nature  of 
man  himself,  quite  forgetting  that  that  nature  is  some- 
what plastic  in  the  grip  of  circumstances. 

So  we  may  imagine  that  if  freedom  of  begetting  off- 
spring would  be  seen  to  threaten  the  lives  of  men  in 
general,  that  freedom  would  not  be  regarded  with  the 
same  equanimity  with  which  we  regard  it  now.  If 
freedom  of  begetting  offspring  has,  therefore,  a  highly 
moral  value  for  men,  why  should  we  deny  it  a  similar 
value  when  it  is  bees  that  are  concerned  ?  If,  with 
bees  and  men,  opposite  practices  are  found  to  flow  from 
the  effects  of  an  identical  function  on  the  freedom  of 
both,  why  impute  a  moral  nature  to  the  one  and  deny 
it  to  the  other  ? 

If  it  be  said  that  the  sense  of  right  and  wrong  be 
inborn  in  the  man,  while  it  is  not  inborn  in  the  bee, 
then  we  must  conclude  that  such  morality  as  the  bee 
has  is  an  acquired  character  and  not  instinctive.  If 
we  say  that  man  has  an  inborn  idea  that  to  kill  a  fellow- 
man  is  wrong,  although  he  does  not  know  why  he 
should  have  that  sense,  we  are  forced  to  the  some- 
what bizarre  conclusion  that  bees  have  an  inborn 
sense  that  to -permit  freedom  of  reproduction  is  wrong, 
and  that  they  know  perfectly  well  why  they  should 
have  that  sense!  This,  it  would  seem,  would  be 
attributing  to  bees  a  higher  intelligence  than  that 
attributed  to  man.  But  if  we  regard  the  so-called 
instinct  of  bees  to  suppress  population,  and  also  that 
of  man  to  encourage  it,  as  acquired  characters,  neces- 


210  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

sary  for  the  survival  of  the  group,  our  diverse  con- 
ceptions of  these  things  will  have  been  unified. 

We  trust  that  the  reader  has  not  forgotten  that  all 
the  facts  of  social  life  we  have  just  discussed  are 
rooted  in  the  broader  fact  of  the  fixed  locality  and  its 
relations  to  enlarging  wealth ;  and  furthermore,  that 
out  of  this  fundamental  fact  arises  the  secondary  fact 
of  the  increasing  capacity  for  the  use  and  ownership  of 
wealth.  Let  us  say,  rather,  that  the  principles  are  co- 
ordinate and  are  themselves  essentials  of  social  prog- 
ress. Let  it  be  remembered,  too,  that  what  we  have 
said  of  moral  growth  applies  as  well  to  intellectual  and 
aesthetic  growth  —  to  the  progress  of  art  and  science 
—  for  these  things  are  but  manifestations  of  the  same 
general  laws  by  which  all  social  progress  flows  for- 
ward. Let  us  leave  this  latter  view  here  to  discuss  it 
in  another  place,  and  turn  our  attention  to  a  highly 
important  moral  phenomenon.  Let  us  look  at  this 
phenomenon  as  it  appears  in  the  light  of  what  we  have 
developed  of  the  law  of  the  incremental  capacity. 

The  phenomenon  we  have  in  mind  is  that  vivid,  if 
obscure,  fact  of  social  existence  called  "  crime."  The 
category  of  crime  has  a  wide  range,  including  acts  of 
highly  diverse  kinds  and  of  infinite  degrees  of  impor- 
tance. Different  groups  of  men  have  different  notions 
of  what  constitutes  crime  in  many  of  its  kinds  and 
degrees.  What  is  crime  in  one  country  is  beneficence 
in  another.  We  have  here  to  offer  a  theory  of  crime 
on  the  principles  we  have  already  laid  down. 

The  very  great  importance  attached  to  crime,  in  all 
of  the  most  highly  civilized  countries,  should  be  suf- 
ficient of  itself  to  merit  the  close  attention  of  social 
science.  But  this  gravity  will  be  understood  when  we 


vi          THE   INCREMENT   AND  THE   SOCIAL   SCALE       211 

look  with  scrutiny  into  the  nature  of  crime  itself  and 
into  the  ideas  which  the  word  connotes.  As  we  re- 
marked in  Chapter  II,  an  act  is  right  or  wrong  in 
just  the  degree  in  which  it  enlarges  or  restricts  the 
bodily  functions  of  life.  Now  the  word  crime  ordi- 
narily means  an  act  proscribed  by  codified  law  and 
made  punishable  through  instruments  created  for  this 
special  purpose.  We  should,  therefore,  expect  to  find 
that  those  acts  which  are  so  proscribed  and  punished 
are  deemed,  by  the  very  great  majority  of  the  group, 
as  being  the  most  essentially  undesirable  of  all  the 
acts  which  are  ordinarily  deemed  to  be  wrong  by 
public  opinion.  And  these  proscribed  and  punish- 
able acts  are  all  of  a  character  which  affect  life  and 
property,  either  directly  or  indirectly.  Any  act  which 
is  not  classified  by  law  as  a  crime  is  held,  theoretically, 
not  to  interfere  with  life  or  property  —  the  qualifica- 
tion, of  course,  always  being  understood,  that  the 
intent  of  the  doer  of  the  act  shall  determine  its  criminal 
or  non-criminal  character. 

It  may  seem  strange  to  a  superficial  view  of  the 
matter,  if  we  attribute  the  presence  of  crime  to 
the  same  cause  which  constitutes  the  motive  of  prog- 
ress and  brings  about  the  tendency  to  the  elimina- 
tion of  crime  itself.  But  this  would  appear  to  be 
the  truth  when  we  discover  how  the  forces  of  in- 
crementation are  used  by  natural  selection  in  social 
evolution.  As  every  fresh  change  in  the  general 
environment  of  a  group  causes  an  increment  to  be 
added  to  the  capacity  of  all  individuals,  and  hence 
to  the  capacity  of  the  group,  for  the  enjoyment  of 
enlarged  functions,  the  efforts  of  individuals  to  secure 
comforts  will  naturally  become  more  intense  and 


212  THE   LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

varied.  Moral  conceptions,  enlarging  with  every 
environmental  change,  will  tend  to  force  a  method 
of  acquisition  of  comforts  which  shall  not  be  repug- 
nant to  the  community's  sense  of  right  and  wrong. 
But  owing  to  variation,  there  must  be  always  some 
individuals  in  whom  the  increment  of  desire  is 
greater  than  the  average  restraint  which  makes  the 
life  and  progress  of  the  group  possible.  These 
individuals  will,  of  course,  seek  to  gratify  their  desires 
by  the  easiest  method  which  is  not  repugnant  to 
their  own  sense  of  justice.  This  increment  of  desire 
produces,  on  the  one  hand,  murderous  thieves,  and 
on  the  other,  the  great  organizers  and  speculators 
of  industry  whose  activities  serve  to  build  up  the 
mechanism  by  which  society  carries  on  its  economic 
functions.  Between  the  manufacturer,  who  uses  his 
capital  to  produce  commodities  for  the  public  market, 
and  the  highway  robber,  who  uses  his  strength  to 
disable  and  despoil  his  fellow-man,  lie  all  the  degrees 
of  incremental  capacity  which  seek  to  gratify  their 
enlarged  desires  with  methods  approved  by  the 
moral  sense  of  their  possessors. 

The  thief  who  appropriates  the  property  of  another 
man  would  not  use  this  method  of  gratifying  his 
economic  wants  could  he  accomplish  the  same  result 
by  a  method  easier  than  that  of  theft.  He  is  at  the 
double  inconvenience  of  risking  moral  reprobation 
and  severe  chastisement  when  he  satisfies  his  desires 
by  a  method  which  is  repugnant  to  the  moral  sense 
of  the  community  and  destructive  of  the  common 
integrity.  Theft  becomes  more  and  more  repugnant 
to  the  moral  sense  of  the  community  as  the  economic 
liberties  of  all  are  increased,  and  as  men  become 


vi          THE   INCREMENT  AND   THE   SOCIAL   SCALE       213 

safer  in  the  possession  of  the  things  they  create. 
Thus  we  observe  that  moral  incrementation  tends, 
through  natural  selection,  to  eliminate  the  practice 
of  theft,  while  economic  incrementation  tends  to 
produce  and  preserve  it.  Of  these  two  forces  the 
balance,  in  a  growing  society,  must  always  favor 
the  elimination  of  actual  theft,  and  preserve  those 
methods  of  acquisition  which  are  not  repugnant  to 
the  growing  moral  idea.  Otherwise  the  society  would 
disintegrate. 

But  out  of  the  process  comes  another  moral 
product  —  as  important  as  the  one  we  have  just 
sketched.  In  an  advancing  group  the  number  of 
acts  classified  as  crimes  against  property  must  con- 
stantly enlarge.  The  idea  of  what  is  right,  in 
relation  to  property,  ever  retreats  before  the  advanc- 
ing environment,  and  before  the  enlarging  sphere  of 
moral  perception  and  concept.  We  are  thus  pre- 
sented, in  viewing  society,  with  the  anomaly  of  an 
increase  in  crime  accompanied  by  positive  progress  in 
morality.  The  anomaly  disappears  when  we  per- 
ceive the  causal  relation  existing  between  the  two 
facts.  There  is  no  absolute  increase  of  crime  if  we 
counterpoise  former  quantities  of  crime  against  the 
moral  concepts  of  the  present.  On  the  contrary, 
when  this  counterposition  is  used,  there  will  be  seen 
to  have  been  a  very  perceptible  diminution  of  crime. 
The  disparity  which  seems  to  exist  is  occasioned  by 
the  fact  that  the  usual  method  of  considering  the 
matter  is  to  counterpoise  the  present  state  of  crime 
against  the  present  moral  sense.  By  this  method,  as 
a  matter  of  course,  the  quantity  of  crime  seems  enor- 
mously increased.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  relative 


214  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

quantity  of  crime  has  increased,  but  the  cause  of 
that  increase  is  found,  not  in  any  enlargement  of 
the  criminal  performances  of  men,  but  in  the  enlarge- 
ment of  the  category  into  which  acts,  deemed 
criminal,  fall.  In  other  words,  the  definition  of  crime 
has  changed,  and  is  changing  rapidly  in  response  to 
the  process  of  moral  incrementation. 

The  familiar  law,  whereby  the  growth  of  a  vital 
organism  is  more  rapidly  accelerated  as  the  organism 
approaches  maturity,  is  found  in  social  growth  also. 
It  will  not  be  denied  that  the  advances  made  in 
the  moral  codes  of  Europe  within  the  past  three 
centuries  have  been  greater  than  for  any  similar 
previous  period.  And  the  advance  in  these  codes 
within  the  century  just  closed  has  been  incomparably 
greater  than  that  of  the  two  preceding  centuries. 
But  there  is  a  causal  relation  between  this  fact  and 
the  further  fact  that  the  environmental  change  in 
Europe,  and  in  European  colonies,  has  been  propor- 
tionally large.  The  mechanical  and  industrial  achieve- 
ments of  the  Nineteenth  Century  are  incomparably 
more,  in  the  mass,  than  all  the  achievements  of 
human  history  before  that  time.  When  we  consider 
that  the  moral  increment  is  ever  in  advance  of  the 
economic  environment,  while  a  group  is  growing, 
we  can  understand  the  vast  changes  through  which 
men's  ideas  of  right  and  wrong  have  passed  within 
the  comparatively  short  time  of  one  hundred  years. 

Why  did  not  the  nations  of  Europe  progress  with 
this  rapidity  in  the  centuries  before  the  Renaissance  ? 
Manifestly  because  they  did  not  possess  the  power  of 
causing  an  alteration  in  the  environment  of  sufficient 
importance  to  produce  a  rapid  incrementation.  There 


vi          THE   INCREMENT   AND  THE   SOCIAL   SCALE       215 

was  nothing  mystical  in  the  acquisition  of  that  power. 
It  was  simply  the  slowly  growing  perception  of  new 
relations  to  the  environment.  If  these  had  not  been 
discovered,  European  groups  would  not  have  devel- 
oped into  the  nations  they  are  now.  They  might 
have  remained  for  ages  in  the  simple  state  in  which 
China  has  remained.  If  bees  had  not  discovered 
their  power  to  build  with  wax,  they  would  not  have 
developed  into  their  present  complex  state.  But  as 
Europeans  progressed  in  discovery,  social  progress 
was  as  inevitable  as  was  the  progress  of  the  bees. 
With  that  progress  is  involved  every  change  in  the 
opinions  of  Europe,  and  its  daughter  colonies,  bearing 
upon  the  question  of  crime. 

We  have  dwelt  upon  crime  in  its  economic  bear- 
ings because  the  very  great  mass  of  crimes  committed 
and  discussed  consists  of  offences  against  property. 
Crimes  against  life  are  most  frequently  traceable  to 
causes  concerned  with  property.  But  when  these 
causes  are  absent,  the  only  others  observed  are  those 
which  involve  ideas  of  honor  or  ideas  of  sex.  In- 
stances of  the  first  kind  are  derivative  from  the 
desires  which  flow  from  the  satisfaction  of  bodily 
wants.  These  are  accounted  for  by  the  same  causes 
that  account  for  the  crime  of  theft  in  all  its  manifold 
forms.  And  crimes  which  are  caused  by  ideas  arising 
out  of  sexual  desires  are  explained  by  the  fact  that 
the  increment  of  capacity  for  the  enjoyment  of  the 
reproductive  function  always  leads  the  individuals 
possessing  it  to  gratify  their  desires  by  the  easiest 
method  which  shall  not  be  repugnant  to  their  moral 
sensibilities.  Crimes  which  spring  out  of  intemper- 
ance are  economic  in  their  root,  and  are  explained  by 


2l6  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

the  pressure  of  the  incremental  capacity  upon  the 
individuals  whose  moral  nature  is  not  sufficiently 
powerful  to  overcome  the  physical  desire. 

If  we  admit  that  this  action  of  incrementation  is 
the  force  at  work  in  social  progress,  we  shall  expect 
to  find  divergence  in  the  moral  life  of  nations  as  well 
as  in  their  economic  life.  We  should  find  wide 
differences  in  the  ideas  of  various  groups  as  to  those 
acts  which  are  classified  as  criminal.  This  we  do 
indeed  discover  when  we  place  the  moral  notions  of 
younger  and  older  nations  side  by  side.  The  moral 
sense  of  a  younger  community  is  always  broader 
than  that  of  the  older.  Europeans  regard  Chinese 
concepts  of  crime  with  horror.  Yet  they  regard  their 
own  status  as  more  immoral  than  that  of  the  Chinese 
is  regarded  by  the  Chinese  themselves.  When  Chinese 
ethics  is  the  measure,  there  is  far  less  crime  in  China 
than  there  is  in  England ;  when  the  measure  of  Eng- 
lish crime  is  English  ethics,  there  is  more  crime  in 
England  than  in  China. 

The  cause  of  these  differences  lies  in  the  fact  that 
China  has  reached  a  state  in  which  the  balance 
between  ethical  concepts  and  economic  environment 
is  comparatively  stable.  But  that  it  is  not  perfectly 
stable  is  made  manifest  by  the  fact  that  in  China  crime 
still  exists.  In  any  group  in  which  these  two  forces 
are  in  stable  equilibrium,  the  phenomenon  of  crime 
cannot  appear.  In  the  only  groups  we  know  to  have 
been  thus  balanced  —  those  of  honey-bees  —  there  is 
no  crime.  Bees  commit  none  of  the  predaceous  acts 
— whether  economic  or  sexual  —  that  are  observed  in 
the  conduct  of  the  animate  world  at  large,  men  in- 
cluded. There  can  be  no  crime  among  them  because 


THE  INCREMENT  AND  THE  SOCIAL  SCALE 


there  is  no  increment  of  desire  to  satisfy.  There  is 
no  increment  because  the  nutritive  and  reproductive 
functions  of  each  are  satisfied  to  the  utmost  limit 
possible  for  each,  and  at  the  same  time  compatible 
with  the  preservation  of  the  group  in  its  entirety.  As 
each  individual  is  the  perfect  economic  equal  of  the 
others,  and  as  the  economic  wants  of  each  are  per- 
fectly satisfied,  there  can  be  no  motive  for  predaceous 
acts  against  property.  Restriction  of  the  reproduc- 
tive function  to  the  lowest  degree  having  been  found 
necessary  to  the  very  life  of  the  community,  there 
can  be  no  motive  for  predaceous  acts  against  sex, 
nor  is  there,  indeed,  any  desire  or  capacity  for  such 
acts.  The  life  of  the  drones  is  sacrificed  to  the  com- 
mon good  because,  having  performed  their  only 
function,  they  are  only  a  menace  to  the  group.  But 
this  act  against  life  is  found  beneficial  and  self- 
preservative,  not  to  any  particular  individual,  but  to 
all.  Bees  are,  therefore,  perfectly  moral. 

In  order  to  reach  this  state  of  perfect  equilibrium, 
the  bee  community  must  have  passed  through  a  pro- 
cess of  incrementation  precisely  similar  to  that  de- 
scribed in  the  beginning  of  the  present  chapter.  It  is 
not  rationally  to  be  assumed  that  a  bee  community, 
with  all  its  complicated  relations  to  the  environment, 
and  with  its  complex  mechanism  for  filling  its  social 
functions,  sprang  into  existence  in  a  single  moment. 
As  we  have  already  said,  it  is  not  necessary  to  argue 
that  the  social  state  of  bees  is  the  result  of  compara- 
tively slow  processes  of  evolution  by  natural  selection. 
The  rapidity  of  those  processes  may  have  been,  and 
probably  was,  greater  than  that  observed  in  human 
social  evolution.  But  the  forces  could  not  have  been 


2l8  THE   LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

different  in  the  two  instances.  We  must  suppose 
that  bees,  in  the  long  evolution  of  their  social  state, 
were  not  insensible  to  notions  of  public  and  private 
wealth.  The  social  phenomena  of  their  lives  dis- 
close moral  perceptions  of  a  comparatively  high  order. 
These  perceptions  may  be  less  complex  than  those  of 
men.  But  if  it  is  denied  that  the  community  of  spirit 
found  in  the  economy  of  the  hive  partake  in  any 
degree  of  the  moral  character,  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  the  same  phenomena  would  be  classified  as  being 
distinctively  moral  if  they  were  observed  among  men. 
And  in  so  far  as  any  such  phenomena  are  observed 
at  all  among  men,  they  are  due  to  precisely  the  same 
forces  to  which  they  are  due  in  bees. 

The  tendency  of  the  action  of  the  incremental 
capacity  among  bees  would  be  to  produce  a  rearrange- 
ment of  the  categories  of  wealth  as  that  rearrange- 
ment is  observed  in  human  societies.  That  tendency 
would  be  to  displace  increasingly  large  numbers  of 
things  from  the  private  category  into  the  public 
category.  That  bees  could  note  the  benefits  derived 
from  this  change  will  hardly  be  disputed  when  we 
remember  how  thorough  is  their  appreciation  of 
the  rights  of  the  queens,  of  the  drones,  and  of  the 
workers.  Experience  taught  them  that  the  larger  the 
category  of  public  wealth  became,  the  larger  would 
be  the  comforts  of  the  mass.  With  this  change 
came  a  corresponding  increase  in  the  capacity  for  use 
and  enjoyment.  The  forces  to  which  freer  play 
would  be  given  by  this  process  would  lie  in  the 
psychic  field  and  would  consist  of  desires  for  larger 
environments.  This  would  result  first,  in  the  increase 
of  the  category  of  public  wealth  and,  secondly,  in 


vi          THE   INCREMENT   AND   THE   SOCIAL   SCALE      219 

the  increase  of  the  quantity  of  things  making  up 
individual  environments.  From  this  action  we  can 
see  how  there  would  result  a  twofold  limitation  ;  first 
of  the  private  category  (resulting  from  an  increas- 
ingly large  number  of  things  passing  from  it  into  the 
category  of  public  wealth);  and  secondly  a  limitation 
of  the  quantity  of  things  attached  to  the  environ- 
ment of  any  particular  individual.  But  this  action 
would  be  accompanied  by  a  very  significant  change 
in  the  method  by  which  the  common  product  would 
be  distributed  —  namely,  a  change  by  which  the 
quantity  of  the  personal  environment  would  increase 
for  an  ever-enlarging  number  of  individuals. 

In  order  to  render  these  somewhat  abstract  and 
apparently  contradictory  propositions  clearer,  we  will 
separate  them,  as  far  as  is  possible,  so  as  to  describe 
the  order  in  which  the  continuous  rearrangement 
takes  place. 

1.  Increase  of  the  kinds  of  public  wealth  accom- 
panied by  increase  of  the  quantity  of  private  wealth. 

2.  Limitation   of  private   wealth  accompanied  by 
limitation  of  the  quantity  of  private  wealth  making 
up  the  environment  of  particular  individuals. 

3.  A  more  equal  diffusion  by  which  those  things 
yet  remaining  in  the  private   category  are  attached 
in  less  quantities  to  a  comparatively  small  number  of 
individuals,  and  in  greater  quantities  to  comparatively 
large  numbers  of  individuals. 

But  from  this  progressive  method  of  diffusion  a 
remarkable  effect  would  necessarily  flow.  It  is  this. 
The  tendency  would  be  toward  a  state  in  which  the 
property  right  zvould  disappear  altogether  except  in 
its  aspect  as  a  public  function.  Indeed,  given  the 


220  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

forces  —  ever  at  play  in  greater  freedom  —  of  the 
increasing  psychic  capacity,  subject  in  its  action  to 
the  moral  limitation,  and  no  other  state  could  possibly 
result.  When  that  state  should  have  arrived,  as  we 
see  that  it  has  arrived  in  groups  of  bees,  there  could 
of  course  be  no  longer  anything  which  could  be 
attachable  to  the  individual.  Wealth,  having  been 
first  of  a  categorical  nature  which  applied  only  to 
the  individual,  would  now  have  been  transformed  into 
a  categorical  nature  which  applied  only  to  the  com- 
munity. The  cycle  of  change  would  have  carried  all 
things  —  at  first  in  the  private  category  —  over  to 
the  public  category.  The  dual  character  of  wealth 
would  have  changed  again  into  a  singular  character, 
but  this  last  character  would  be  the  extreme  opposite 
of  the  first. 

This  fluxion  has  actually  taken  place  in  groups  of 
bees  —  unless  we  assume  that  bees  have  not  evolved 
from  a  non-social  to  a  social  state,  or  that  they  have 
not  evolved  from  a  social  state  which  was  very  much 
less  complex  than  that  observed  in  honey-bees  at 
present.  In  such  societies  there  is  not  now  anything 
that  is  purely  private  property.  Private  property  can- 
not exist  among  social  bees  —  at  least  of  the  com- 
monly observed  type  —  because  such  category  is  to 
them  suggestive  of  the  highest  wrong.  Moral  con- 
cepts are  in  perfect  equilibrium  with  the  economic 
system  developed  by  their  necessities  and  activities 
through  the  forces  of  the  incremental  capacity.  Any 
attempt  to  reinstitute  private  property,  or  to  make 
things  attachable  to  any  individual  environment, 
would  be  resisted  to  the  last  effort,  because  such  re- 
institution  would  result  in  the  destruction  of  the 


vi          THE   INCREMENT  AND  THE   SOCIAL   SCALE       221 

equilibrium,  and  hence  of  the  social  system  which 
experience  has  taught  is  the  most  salutory  and  the 
most  free. 

So  long  as  the  natural  supply  of  food  continues  in 
quantities  ample  for  the  sustentation  of  social  life, 
private  property  can  never  again  arise  among  hive- 
bees.  That  it  may  not  seem  absurd  to  speak  of  the 
private  and  public  wealth  of  so  small  a  creature  as  a 
bee,  we  need  but  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  the 
habitation  of  a  solitary  bee  is  as  sacredly  its  own  as 
is  that  of  a  man,  and  that  it  is  defended  with  as 
much  spirit  and  as  much  affection.  And  while  this  is 
perfectly  true,  it  may  be  noted,  also,  that  the  wars 
between  communities  of  bees  are  in  no  wise  dif- 
ferent from  wars  between  nations  of  men  —  unless 
we  except  the  ferocious  and  useless  extermination 
often  practised  by  men  and  never  practised  by  bees. 
If  the  supply  of  food,  however,  were  so  severely 
curtailed  as  seriously  to  disturb  the  economico-moral 
equilibrium,  private  property  would  certainly  arise, 
and  we  should  expect  to  see  that  groups  of  bees 
would  return  to  the  state  which  had  existed  before 
the  establishment  of  that  equilibrium. 

In  societies  of  bees  the  increment  of  capacity  has 
acted  only  in  an  economic  way,  and  there  is  found  no 
collateral  development  of  art  and  intellect.  It  is  true 
that  bees  show  architectural  art  in  a  very  high  degree, 
but  there  is  here  no  appreciation  of  the  aesthetic  for 
the  very  sake  of  the  aesthetic  itself.  Art  and  economy 
have  not  been  differentiated.  The  beauty  associated 
with  the  industrial  products  of  insects  is  derived  from 
forms  of  structure  directly  serving  the  purposes  of 
pure  utility.  But  if  art  or  intellect  have  not  ad- 


222  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

vanced  with  the  economic  growth  of  social  bees,  it 
is  because  of  the  comparatively  simple  nature  of  their 
nervous  system.  The  thought-life  of  the  individual 
insect  is  carried  on  by  an  apparatus  less  integrated 
and  centralized  than  that  of  the  mammal.  Coordi- 
nation of  ideas,  owing  to  this  diffuse  character  of 
nervous  function  and  organ,  is  less  complex  than  that 
found  in  the  nervous  action  of  mammals.  Therefore 
art  could  never  arise  beyond  its  purely  utilitarian 
aspect.  Bees  possess  bodily  organs  which  could  be 
utilized  for  the  creation  of  works  of  art  of  a  beauty 
proportionate  to  that  of  the  honeycomb ;  but  these  in- 
struments are  never  used  for  this  purpose  because  there 
is  no  aesthetic  capacity  which  such  use  could  satisfy. 

Because  of  his  highly  centralized  ganglionic  appa- 
ratus, man's  ideas  of  comfort  are  proportionally  more 
complex  than  those  of  bees  ;  and  because  of  his  social 
state  they  are  infinitely  more  complex  than  those  of 
other  high  mammals.  Comfort-ideas  of  different 
groups  vary  in  complexity  because  of  various  degrees 
of  power  to  alter  the  environment.  But  as  aesthetic 
and  intellectual  ideas  arise  out  of  these  bodily  desires, 
we  should  look  for  the  highest  art  and  the  highest 
intellectuality  in  groups  which  had  developed  ideas  of 
comfort  to  the  highest  degree.  And  these  two  orders 
of  facts  are  always  found  together,  as  a  matter  of 
observation.  For  although  the  Greeks  affected  to 
despise  utility,  they  despised  it  only  as  an  end  toward 
which  to  direct  the  highest  efforts  of  genius.  Their 
economic  life  had  kept  pace  with  their  aesthetic  and 
intellectual  progress.  Their  trade  was  immense, 
their  inventions  were  numerous  and  highly  useful, 
their  private  fortunes  were  large,  and  the  form  of  their 


vi          THE   INCREMENT  AND   THE   SOCIAL   SCALE       223 

government  was  pseudo-democratic,  or  at  least  the 
power  of  the  tyranny  was  limited  more  in  them  than 
in  other  political  groups  of  their  time.  If  the  artists 
and  the  philosophers  made  a  special  effort  to  condemn 
utility,  it  could  only  have  been  because  economic 
ideas  were  by  no  means  weak  among  Greeks.  In 
the  present  day  we  find  the  same  tendency  among 
professors  of  art,  if  not  among  professors  of  science. 
But  it  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  Platonic 
method  has  been  replaced  by  the  Baconian  method 
in  intellectual  progress. 

If  the  Greeks  had  not  invented  mechanical  instru- 
ments, they  could  never  have  produced  the  highly 
finished  works  of  painting,  sculpture,  and  architec- 
ture, whose  existence  is  attested  by  the  remains  of 
Grecian  civilization.  The  modern  painter  who  de- 
spises the  chemist,  the  mechanic,  the  weaver,  and  the 
utilities  created  by  them,  could  never  produce  his 
pictures  were  he  not  first  supplied  with  tools ;  nor 
could  he  have  acquired  the  capacity  for  the  use  of 
the  tools  had  not  the  chemist,  the  mechanic,  and  the 
weaver  wrought  before  him.  Among  the  Greeks, 
Polygnotus  and  Zeuxis,  and  other  earlier  masters, 
used  but  four  colors.  These  were  white,  red,  black, 
and  yellow.  According  to  Cicero,  Grecian  art  in 
painting  was  perfected  in  the  time  of  Protogenes,  or 
about  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  later.  By  that 
time  the  number  of  colors  had  been  increased  indefi- 
nitely, to  such  an  extent  that  modern  painters,  prob- 
ably, do  not  use  as  many  colors  as  did  Protogenes  or 
Apelles.  Greek  painting,  as  found  in  its  decadence 
in  the  ruins  of  Pompeii,  used  not  less  than  thirty 
shades  derived  from  six  basic  colors. 


224  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

It  will  be  observed  that  Greek  art,  progressing  by 
incrementation,  was  limited  by  the  industrial  life  of 
the  group.  In  so  far  as  industry  could  offer  tools,  it 
was  possible  for  the  aesthetic  increment  to  alter  the 
aesthetic  environment.  Thus  Greek  painting,  sculp- 
ture, architecture,  and  poetry  advanced  together,  and 
were  carried  to  a  state  scarcely  inferior  to  that  of  these 
arts  in  the  present  time.  Yet  if  we  compare  the 
aesthetic  ideas  of  modern  Europe  with  those  of  an- 
cient Greece,  we  will  find  that,  in  the  total,  they  are 
vastly  more  complex,  and  greater  in  quantity.  Com- 
pared with  the  compositions  of  modern  musicians,  the 
music  of  the  Greeks  was  crude.  In  the  high  excel- 
lence of  modern  graphic  and  plastic  art,  in  modern 
decoration  and  design,  in  the  adaptability  of  beauty 
to  use,  and  in  the  common  and  individual  wealth  of 
everyday  life,  the  modern  European  city  is  a  complex 
of  aesthetic  possession  and  capacity  with  which  to 
compare  ancient  Athens  would  savor  of  irony.  This 
truth  will  be  the  more  clearly  perceived  when  we  con- 
sider how  the  incremental  capacity,  ever  at  work  cre- 
ating new  utilities,  rearranging  the  categories  of 
wealth  and  changing  the  method  of  diffusion,  has  in- 
creased the  aesthetic  ideas  of  the  masses  and  has  sur- 
rounded increasingly  large  numbers  of  individuals 
with  aesthetic  environments  unknown  to  ancient 
peoples. 

If  we  examine  into  the  nature  of  social  progress, 
we  shall  find  that  it  consists  of  an  increase  in  the 
quantity  of  wealth  not  for  the  use  of  the  few  but  for 
the  use  of  the  many.  A  group  in  which  usable 
wealth  is  attached  in  very  large  quantities  to  a  few 
individuals  must  be  backward,  weak,  and  ignorant,  as 


VI          THE  INCREMENT  AND   THE   SOCIAL   SCALE      22 5 

compared  with  a  group  in  which  the  reverse  is  the 
truth  ;  and  it  will  be  backward,  weak,  and  ignorant  in 
just  the  degree  in  which  its  wealth  is  so  diffused.  As 
use  begets  capacity,  the  total  capacity  of  a  group  will 
be  high  or  low  according  to  the  degree  of  diffusion. 
Any  action  which  tends  to  bring  about  a  more  equal 
division  must  be  progressive  action.  But  the  aesthetic 
and  intellectual  capacity  of  a  people  is  increased  only 
by  an  increase  of  use  through  possession.  And  as 
the  basis  of  aesthetic  and  intellectual  capacity  is  pos- 
session of  the  things  used  to  develop  that  capacity, 
the  basis  of  aesthetic  and  intellectual  progress  must  be 
economic  progress.  Furthermore,  as  the  force  which 
causes  economic  progress  is,  as  we  have  seen,  moral, 
we  are  led  to  the  conclusion  that  the  four  processes 
which  constitute  social  progress  —  that  is,  the  eco- 
nomic, the  moral,  the  aesthetic,  and  the  intellectual  — 
are  really  only  aspects  of  one  continuous  process  the 
roots  of  which  are  embedded  in  the  process  of  in- 
crementation. And  this  process  is  itself  caused  by 
the  power  of  the  group  to  alter  its  environment  with- 
out changing  its  place. 

If  we  ask  whether  England  has  made  any  social 
progress  since  the  time  of  Henry  VIII.,  the  answer 
will  be  affirmative.  Why  ?  Not  because  the  wealth 
of  England  has  increased,  but  because  that  wealth  is 
more  equally  divided  than  was  the  quantity  of  the 
wealth  which  England  possessed  four  centuries  ago. 
If  it  were  possible  to  conceive,  that  all  the  wealth  of 
England  should  be  in  the  possession  of  a  few  indi- 
viduals who,  for  any  reason  whatever,  should  refuse 
to  permit  its  general  use,  England  could  be  conceived 
to  be  in  a  state  beside  which  the  England  of  four 
Q 


226  THE   LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

centuries  ago  had  been  comparatively  free.  But  the 
bare  suggestion  of  the  idea  is  sufficient  to  suggest 
the  impossibility  of  its  conception.  England  has  pro- 
gressed because  the  multiplication  of  wealth  has 
necessitated  a  rearrangement  in  the  method  of  its 
division.  The  environment  of  a  mere  mechanic  of 
the  present  day  is  such  as  all  the  power  of  a  Henry 
could  not  accumulate  in  Henry's  day.  And  the  same 
logic  applies  with  stronger  force  to  the  progressive 
state  of  new  groups  which  have  sprung  from  England 
as  colonies.  The  prosperous  clerk  in  America  may 
possess  economic,  aesthetic,  and  intellectual  comforts 
which  not  even  the  power  of  the  greatest  monarch  of 
Europe  could  have  secured  a  century  since.  Wealth 
has  not  only  increased  absolutely  but  relatively.  The 
position  of  servant  and  master  is  interchangeable 
among  individuals.  And  in  democratic  communities 
political  progress  has,  of  necessity,  followed  economic 
progress.  The  diffusion  of  political  power  must  ever 
adjust  itself  to  the  diffusion  of  wealth.  The  modify- 
ing force  in  each  process  is  the  growing  moral  idea ; 
and  as  the  economic  increment  ever  presses  the 
moral  increment  before  it,  political  institutions  must 
change  to  meet  the  newly  evolved  concepts — must 
change,  first  in  substance  and  subsequently  in  form. 
We  have  yet  to  consider  the  last  phenomenon  of 
social  life  we  shall  examine  here  as  related  to  the 
action  of  the  increment  of  capacity.  That  is  the  dis- 
appearance of  certain,  intermediate  forms  of  social 
groups.  An  increase  of  population  in  a  prosperous 
society  would  cause  progressively  larger  increments 
of  capacity  until  the  pressure  of  population  would 
restrict  economic  comforts  and  cause  the  individual 


THE  INCREMENT  AND   THE   SOCIAL   SCALE 


wealth  to  contract  rather  than  expand.  This  phe- 
nomenon could  be  due  to  no  cause  other  than  one 
concerned  with  the  supply  of  food  in  a  warm  climate, 
or  with  supply  of  food  and  shelter  and  clothing  if  the 
climate  were  cold.  Such  groups  would,  therefore, 
alter  their  environments  in  correspondingly  decreasing 
degrees.  The  diminishing  return  from  agriculture 
and  from  productive  processes  of  every  kind  would 
progressively  decrease  the  increment  of  capacity,  and 
by  this  action  the  group  would  approach  an  equilibrium 
between  its  moral  concepts  and  its  economic  mode  of 
life.  But  this  equilibrium  could  not  be  established 
because  its  essential  condition  would  be  absent,  that 
condition  being  a  plentiful  supply  of  the  very  food 
which,  by  pressure  of  increasing  numbers,  would  be 
made  relatively  smaller.  The  balance  could  not  be 
struck  until  the  decrease  in  food,  or  the  peculiar 
method  of  its  "division,  would  so  act  upon  the  repro- 
ductive organs  of  the  race  as  to  arrest  their  develop- 
ment. But  this  process  does  not  take  place  with 
men.  When  the  quantity  of  food  is  restricted,  the 
vital  organism  of  man  is  changed  only  in  one  way. 
That  is,  he  becomes  weaker,  not  in  his  reproductive 
functions,  but  in  all  his  functions.  Thus  the  society 
loses  in  the  efficiency  of  the  labor,  and  in  its  quantity 
of  labor  power,  of  all  of  its  integers.  If  the  pressure 
become  so  great  as  to  leave  only  enough  food  for  the 
bare  subsistence  of  the  worker,  the  population  would 
fall  below  the  level  possible  for  the  highest  and  most 
efficient  production.  This  would  cause  larger  shares 
of  product  distributed  to  each  individual,  and  the  result 
would  be  another  increase  in  population  beyond  the 
normal  number  which  the  food  supply  could  support. 


228  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

The  society  would  in  this  way  present  the  phe- 
nomenon upon  which  the  academic  "  law  of  wages  "  is 
based.  But  that  law  is  explained  by  the  fact  that  the 
group  is  seeking  an  equilibrium,  which  it  cannot  attain 
so  long  as  the  reproductive  forces  continue  to  act  in 
freedom  when  the  food  supply  is  sufficient.  The 
society  thus  oscillates  above  and  below  the  level  at 
which  it  would  rest  permanently  if  the  number  of  the 
population  could  be  brought  into  a  balance  with  the 
food  productivity  of  the  workers.  But  in  a  society 
such  as  we  have  here  supposed  the  level  would  con- 
stantly shift  to  lower  and  lower  norms  of  population. 
Were  the  food  supply  constant,  the  society  would 
remain  in  equilibrium  by  the  process  of  oscillation 
described  above.  Its  economic  increment  would  rise 
and  fall  with  the  quantity  of  population.  The  in- 
crement could  again  become  progressive  only  by  in- 
ventions which  would  make  intensive  cultivation  prac- 
ticable, or  in  lieu  of  that,  by  inventions  which  would 
enable  the  group  to  increase  its  food  supply  by  inter- 
national trade.  But  if  no  such  new  discoveries  of  rela- 
tions to  the  environment  were  made,  as  in  the  case  of 
China,  the  group  would  remain  indefinitely  in  the 
very  state  in  which  we  see  that  China  has  remained 
for  centuries. 

But  should  the  absolute  quantity  of  the  food  supply 
become  progressively  decreased,  the  level  toward 
which  the  population  would  tend  would  be  lowered 
progressively,  and  the  absolute  number  of  population 
would  progressively  decrease.  We  would  then  see 
the  reverse  of  the  process  observed  in  a  growing 
society,  or  in  one  word,  decay.  Such  a  society,  if  not 
in  isolation,  would  be  certain  to  disintegrate  very 


vi          THE   INCREMENT   AND   THE   SOCIAL   SCALE      22Q 

rapidly  by  emigration  to  more  prosperous  or  younger 
contiguous  groups.  It  would  not  be  necessary,  for 
the  encompassment  of  its  death,  that  its  numbers  be 
reduced  until  starvation  would  put  an  end  to  their 
activities.  Disintegration  would  take  place  if  con- 
tiguous social  environments  offered  any  very  appre- 
ciably great  advantages.  If  this  did  not  occur  the 
society  would  be  subject  to  quick  elimination  by 
stronger  neighbors  with  more  efficient  instruments 
of  war. 

These  laws  of  social  life,  while  generally  manifest, 
are  not  so  clear  when  applied  to  certain  well-known 
facts  of  history,  as,  for  example,  the  disintegration 
and  death  of  ancient  Rome.  Rome  was  quickly 
eliminated  by  close  contact  with  the  great  peoples 
of  the  north  and  their  superior  economic  system. 
The  barbarian  "groups  of  Europe  never  had,  so  far 
as  we  know,  the  rigid  system  of  slavery  practised 
in  Rome  and  other  more  civilized  groups  of  the 
south.  Communal  and  feudal  systems  existed  in 
full  force  as  early  as  the  time  of  Caesar.  Even  in 
Britain  this  system  prevailed,  and  the  economic 
system  of  continental  Europe  was  more  efficient  and 
freer  than  that  of  the  islands.  The  so-called  barba- 
rians had  developed  agriculture  and  trade  to  a  com- 
paratively high  degree.  They  bought  peace  from 
Rome  by  the  payment  of  vast  sums  of  wealth 
which  Rome  could  not  herself  create. 

The  decline  of  Roman  military  power  was  inevi- 
table under  these  conditions.  Rome's  military  con- 
trol over  the  north  was  a  thing  of  the  past  long 
before  the  accession  of  Hadrian.  The  causes  of  this 
decline  were  apparent  to  Suetonius  who,  if  he  did 


230  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

not  describe  it  with  the  precision  of  a  modern 
economist,  hinted  at  it  broadly.  Political  groups 
with  a  comparatively  free  system  of  labor  and  pro- 
duction, which  could  support  Rome  in  idleness,  could 
not  be  forced  to  submit  to  Roman  rule  when  Roman 
methods  of  aggression  and  defence  were  theirs  to 
seize.  They  had  a  greater  man-power  than  Rome ; 
and  they  created  their  own  wealth.  Thus  Rome  was 
beginning  to  decay  from  the  moment  it  sought  to 
extend  its  empire  over  groups  which  were  not 
encumbered  with  its  own  rigid  system  of  slavery. 
Roman  conquest  was  dead  centuries  before  the 
peoples  of  the  north  had  ever  heard  of  the  Chris- 
tian religion  and  its  ethics.  If  Christian  ethics 
quickly  overspread  Europe  afterwards,  it  was  because 
the  economic  state  of  Europe  was  freer  and  richer 
than  that  of  the  Romans  to  whom  Christian  ethics, 
with  its  ideas  of  equality,  was  repugnant.  And  if 
Rome  was  christianized  herself,  it  was  because  the 
economic  superiority  of  the  north  had  compelled 
her  to  abandon  her  methods  of  conquest. 

How  will  this  view  modify  our  conceptions  of 
European  life  after  the  death  of  Rome  ?  It  has 
been  the  custom  of  historians  to  discuss  with  much 
gravity  the  effect  of  the  fall  of  Rome  on  modern 
Europe,  just  as  they  discuss  the  effect  of  the  fall 
of  Napoleon  on  European  political  life.  The  truth 
is  that  the  fall  of  Rome  had  no  effect  whatever  upon 
anything.  We  may  as  well  discuss  the  effect  of  the 
old  system  of  Ptolemaic  astronomy  upon  modern 
telescopes  or  spectroscopes,  the  effect  of  the  Platonic 
philosophy  on  the  inductive  method  of  science,  or  the 
effect  of  the  passing  of  the  guild  system  on  the  modern 


vi          THE   INCREMENT  AND   THE   SOCIAL   SCALE       231 

factory  system  of  industry.  The  two  orders  of  things 
are  not  causally  related  at  all.  European  progress  was 
altogether  independent  of  Roman  military  conquest  or 
Roman  life.  Rome  was  simply  eliminated  when  she 
came  into  contact  with  the  more  efficient  economic 
system  of  the  north. 

Historians  treat  of  European  life,  after  the  fall  of 
Rome,  as  if  Europe  had  been  in  the  grasp  of  some 
mysterious  power  which  played  with  its  destinies  in 
some  inscrutable  fashion,  to  the  wonder  and  amaze- 
ment of  the  student  of  history.  They  divide  modern 
European  social  life  into  two  periods :  first,  the  Dark 
Ages ;  secondly,  the  Renaissance  and  its  subsequence. 
For  nearly  one  thousand  years,  they  say,  Europe  lay 
as  if  under  the  influence  of  some  withering  blight  which 
chilled  the  motives  of  progress  at  their  very  sources. 
Then,  suddenly,  the  blight  lifted  and  voila !  the 
Renaissance !  This  view  of  social  progress  is  about 
as  logical  as  would  be  that  of  one  who,  seeing  an 
individual  in  infancy  and  again  in  maturity,  should 
forthwith  express  amazement,  and  attribute  the 
change  to  the  operation  of  some  miraculous  cause. 
This  is  not  customarily  done  because  the  phenomenon 
of  slow  growth  in  vital  organisms  is  familiar  to  every- 
body. And  he  who  watches  the  progress  of  Europe 
from  the  fall  of  Rome  to  the  Renaissance  will  be  no 
more  moved  to  attribute  the  change  to  some  suddenly 
acting  mysterious  power,  than  he  is  to  attribute  a 
growth  of  beard  on  the  face  of  a  man  to  the  same 
cause. 

The  fact  is  that  the  Dark  Ages  and  the  Renais- 
sance have  no  existence  whatever  save  as  false  ideas 
in  the  minds  of  those  who  use  the  terms.  There  were 


232  THE   LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

no  Dark  Ages  and  there  was  no  Renaissance.  There 
was  no  blight  and  there  was  no  restoration.  These 
ideas  are  pure  delusions.  How  were  the  centuries 
between  500  A.D.  and  1400  A.D.  dark?  Dark,  truly, 
as  compared  with  the  nineteenth  century,  but  by  no 
means  dark  as  compared  with  the  first  century  B.C., 
or  with  any  other  period  in  any  other  civilization 
before  the  fifteenth  century  A.D.  There  was  no 
slavery  of  the  antique  kind  in  Europe  during  the 
centuries  in  question.  There  had  never  been,  except 
in  the  old  civilizations.  The  Middle  Ages  did  not 
produce  an  Aristotle  or  a  Phidias,  and  we  shall  see 
why  in  the  next  chapter.  But  was  the  social  system 
which  could  produce  the  schoolmen  so  very  ineffi- 
cient as  compared  with  the  system  which  produced  the 
philosophers  who  lived  in  Athens  before  the  age  of 
Pericles  ?  Mediaeval  Europe  produced  the  Venerable 
Bede,  Rabanus  Maurus,  Remigius  of  Auxerre,  Alcuin, 
the  Abbot  Fredegisus,  Scotus  Erigena,  Anselm  of 
Canterbury,  William  of  Champeaux,  Bernard  of 
Chartres,  Roscellinus  and  Abelard,  Gilbert  of  Poitiers, 
John  of  Salisbury,  Alexander  of  Hales,  Thomas  of 
Aquin,  Henry  of  Ghent,  Roger  Bacon,  Duns  Scotus, 
William  of  Occam,  and  other  metaphysicians  infinitely 
more  acute  than  was  ever  an  ancient  Greek.  As  we 
approach  the  fourteenth  century  the  intellectual  move- 
ment in  Europe  assumes  brilliance  and  proportion. 
Most  of  the  modern  sciences  had  been  germinating 
for  centuries,  while  in  Cordova  the  Saracens  had 
vastly  improved  upon  the  traditional  science  they  had 
carried  over  with  them  from  Asia. 

But  if  Arabic  science  flourished  in  Europe  it  was 
because   of   European  environment,  for  we  see  that 


vi          THE   INCREMENT   AND  THE   SOCIAL   SCALE       233 

European  science  was  developing  rapidly  and  inde- 
pendently in  close  contiguity  with  that  of  the  Arabs 
in  Spain.  The  brilliance  of  the  mediaeval  schools  can 
hardly  be  called  inferior  to  that  of  the  Athenian 
schools.  Experimental  science  flourished  in  mediaeval 
Europe  as  it  never  could  have  flourished  in  Greece  or 
Rome.  The  ages  which  could  indulge  in  an  intel- 
lectual debate  beside  which  that  of  Greece  was 
insignificant ;  which  could  preserve  all  the  ancient 
books  we  now  possess ;  which  could  develop  the 
Aristotelian  philosophy  so  as  forever  to  set  at  rest  the 
question  of  Nominalism  and  Realism ;  which  could 
bury  a  Thomas  Aquinas  with  imperial  pomp  ;  which 
could  originate  the  methods  of  science  which  were 
soon  to  flower  and  bear  fruit  in  Leonardo  da  Vinci, 
Aquapendente,  Copernicus,  Guttenberg,  Kepler,  and 
Newton,  cannot  truthfully  be  called  dark,  whatever 
else  may  be  said  of  them. 

But,  it  may  be  said,  the  Church  of  Rome  held  sway 
over  the  minds  of  the  people.  True,  the  Church  of 
Rome  was  powerful.  But  it  was  powerful  because 
the  people  believed  its  dogmas.  Was  the  progress 
of  ancient  Athens  in  art  and  intellect  less  forward 
because  Athenians  believed  that  Zeus  ruled  the  sky  ? 
What  had  their  belief  to  do  with  the  quantity  of  wealth 
which  they  produced?  WThat  had  the  popes  to  do 
with  the  economic  system  of  serfdom  in  Europe  ? 
The  church  taught  that  pure  slavery  was  immoral. 
What  influence  could  it  have  had  on  Europe  if  it  had 
attempted  to  replace  the  serf  system  with  the  slave 
system  ?  The  serf  system  was  there  before  the 
Church  came.  A  religion  which  condemned  slavery 
would  be  acceptable  to  a  political  group,  or  any 


234  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

number  of  allied  political  groups,  in  which  slavery 
did  not  exist.  And  when  we  consider  that  the  liberty 
of  the  serf  was  increased,  not  with  the  spread  of 
Christianity,  but  with  the  increase  of  the  wealth  of 
Europe,  we  begin  to  perceive  the  true  relations 
of  wealth  to  political  conditions.  The  Christianity 
of  Europe  has  changed  in  the  past  ten  centuries. 
Has  the  change  been  caused  by  any  social  force 
exerted  by  the  ethical  teachings  of  Christianity  ? 
Could  the  force  of  those  precepts  be  understood  by  a 
lord  or  a  serf  ?  Do  lords  free  their  serfs  because 
Jesus  tells  them  to  practise  the  "  Golden  Rule "  ? 
Could  the  preaching  of  the  golden  rule  in  ancient 
Athens  or  Rome  bring  about  the  decline  of  the  mili- 
tant state  or  the  abolition  of  slavery  ?  We  know  very 
well  that  it  could  not.  On  the  contrary,  we  know 
that  it  brought  about  the  death  of  those  who  preached 
it.  And  we  know,  furthermore,  that  Rome's  military 
power  was  destroyed  by  the  economic  strength  of  the 
pagan  peoples  of  the  north. 

We  hear  much  discussion  about  the  Dark  Ages 
and  the  Renaissance  of  Europe.  We  hear  very  little 
about  the  Dark  Ages  and  Renaissance  of  ancient 
Greece  and  Rome.  Yet  if  there  was  a  social  blight 
on  Europe  in  the  ten  centuries  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
there  was  no  less  a  blight  upon  Greece  in  the  cen- 
turies called  the  heroic  age.  And  if  there  was  a 
rebirth  of  art  and  intellect  in  Europe,  there  was  also 
a  rebirth  in  Greece  and  Rome.  But  the  intellectual 
and  aesthetic  movement  in  Greece  was  a  birth,  not  a 
rebirth,  and  the  same  is  true  of  the  intellectual  and 
aesthetic  movement  of  modern  Europe.  Greek  ideals 
could  not  influence  Europe  until  European  wealth 


vi          THE   INCREMENT  AND   THE   SOCIAL   SCALE       235 

had  created  ideals  of  its  own.  Nor  could  Egyptian  or 
Hindoo  or  Assyrian  ideals  influence  Greece  until  the 
economic  growth  of  that  society  made  such  action 
possible.  If  we  discuss  Dark  Ages  and  Renaissance 
with  concern  to  modern  Europe,  we  must  discuss  them 
also  with  concern  to  every  political  group  in  human 
history.  There  is  no  mystery  in  these  things  at  all. 

The  process  of  incrementation,  in  its  four  aspects 
of  economic,  aesthetic,  intellectual,  and  ethical  rela- 
tions, is  quite  as  mechanical  as  any  of  the  processes, 
vital  or  psychic,  of  which  it  is  the  sum.  Progress,  as 
we  have  seen,  is  no  more  or  less  than  the  action  of 
the  increment  of  capacity  on  the  environment.  The 
enlargement  of  capacity,  consequent  upon  the  acquisi- 
tion of  things,  is  not  produced  by  the  existence  of  any 
intelligent  purpose  in  the  mind  of  the  individual 
whose  capacity  is  enlarged.  Given  the  circumstance 
of  the  increment  of  possession,  and  the  increment  of 
capacity  follows  as  a  natural  and  inevitable  effect. 
No  analysis,  however  close,  can  reveal  any  but  a 
mechanical  nature  in  the  process.  It  is  in  no  wise 
controlled  or  influenced  by  the  will  of  the  individual 
more  than  any  other  function  he  possesses,  bodily  or 
mental.  To  hold  otherwise  would  be  equivalent  to 
holding  that  by  the  exercise  of  the  cerebral  function 
one  can  at  will  perceive  that  axiomatic  propositions 
are  untrue,  or  that  the  assimilative  functions  of  the 
body  can  be  changed  by  the  process  of  assimilation 
into  functions  of  excretion. 

We  are  thus  led  to  the  conclusion  that  social 
growth  is  a  process  entirely  independent  of  man's 
volition.  Societies  do  not  present  the  order  observed 
in  progress  because  it  is  the  desire  of  men  that  they 


236  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP,  vi 

should  progress  in  this  way.  If  we  are  prepared  to 
admit  that  man's  body  has  been  produced  and  devel- 
oped by  the  play  of  blind  forces  through  the  law  of 
natural  selection,  we  should  be  prepared  to  admit 
that  societies  are  developed  by  the  same  causes.  If 
man's  brain  is  not  the  product  of  the  will  of  the  shift- 
ing mass  of  animals  out  of  which  he  has  emerged, 
no  more  can  society  be  said  to  be  the  product  of 
forces  which  are  more  intelligent.  If  blind  force  can 
be  found  to  account  for  the  structure  of  man's  body 
and  the  function  of  man's  brain,  blind  force  must  be 
found  to  account  for  the  structure  of  the  complex 
associations  of  men  which  are  called  human  society. 

It  matters  little  whether  this  theory  shall  be  ac- 
ceptable to  the  minds  of  few  or  of  many.  To  those 
who,  as  men  claiming  to  be  teachers  of  social  science, 
yet  reserve  a  little  of  their  opinion,  expressed  or 
avowed,  for  the  entertainment  of  views  which  give 
man  a  separate  place  in  the  economy  of  things,  we 
say  that  this  reserve  is  as  unscientific  as  any  other 
delusion.  It  can  serve  the  purpose  of  human  knowl- 
edge no  more  than  can  any  other  guess.  It  should 
be  classified  with  similar  reserves  held  in  all  times  by 
men  who  leave  go  of  ancient  beliefs  with  reluctance. 
Whatever  vitality  it  may  seem  to  possess  is  due,  not 
to  any  grounds  of  probability,  reinforced  by  human 
observation  in  any  other  department  of  science,  but 
to  the  inability  of  those  who  hold  it  to  rid  themselves 
of  the  yet  remaining  touch  of  the  old  and  surmounted 
method  of  deduction.  And  it  is  explained  by  that 
variation  which  is  found  in  the  intellectual  (as  well 
as  moral  and  economic)  capacities  of  men  in  the 
compound  process  of  incrementation. 


CHAPTER   VII 

SOCIAL    KINETICS 

WHEN  the  historian  undertakes  to  write  the  life 
story  of  a  nation,  he  proceeds  about  his  work  accord- 
ing to  a  fixed  and  definite  plan  of  action.  His  purpose 
is  to  tell  the  story  of  the  nation's  life  from  its  beginning 
to  its  end ;  or,  if  the  nation  be  still  alive,  to  tell  that 
story  from  the  -beginning  down  to  the  present  time. 

But  the  beginning  of  a  nation's  life  is  never  so  defi- 
nite, either  in  time  or  in  place,  as  the  historian  would 
naturally  desire.  He  finds  that  to  understand  the 
motives,  or  the  thought-life,  of  any  people,  he  must  go 
back  a  step  or  two  beyond  the  date  at  which  the  nation 
can  be  said  to  have  an  independent  existence  of  its 
own.  He  must  trace  the  stream  of  its  life  back  to 
its  national  childhood,  and  endeavor  to  connect  the 
earlier  events  of  the  nation's  history  with  those  which 
come  later.  In  other  words,  his  purpose  requires  him 
to  show  in  his  narrative  the  continuous  and  unbroken 
chain  of  cause  and  effect,  the  contemplation  of  which 
shall  be  the  contemplation  of  the  nation's  life  itself. 

Such,  too,  is  the  method  of  him  who  would  relate 
the  life  story  of  a  man.  The  biographer  cannot 
begin  his  work  with  the  fully  matured  individual. 
He  must  account  for  the  conduct  and  character  of 
the  grown  man  by  inquiring  into  the  character  of 
the  youth  and  of  the  child.  And  he  finds  that  this 

237 


238  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

inquiry  will  carry  him  beyond  the  existence  of  the 
individual  himself  to  the  character  of  his  parents,  or 
even  of  his  remote  ancestors,  so  far  as  can  be  known. 

All  these  facts  are  only  conclusive  evidence  of  a 
broader  fact  underlying  existence  of  every  kind. 
They  are  evidence  of  that  continuity  of  action,  and  of 
that  contiguity  of  things,  seen  everywhere  in  the 
scheme  of  visible  and  sensible  creation.  The  history 
of  one  man  is  inseparably  bound  up  with  the  history 
of  other  men ;  and  the  life  of  any  particular  group  of 
men  cannot  be  set  apart,  historically,  from  the  lives 
of  other  groups,  near  or  remote  in  time  or  in  place. 
In  a  word,  the  first  duty  of  the  historian  is  to  find  the 
elements  of  the  national  life  he  has  undertaken  to  de- 
scribe ;  and  to  accomplish'  this  end  he  is  perforce 
required  to  go  back  into  the  past  as  far  as  may  be, 
and  to  master,  with  as  much  accuracy  as  possible,  the 
nature  of  the  sources  from  which  the  subject  of  his 
narrative  has  sprung. 

The  inquiry  we  are  making  in  this  book  is  not  con- 
cerned with  the  life  of  any  particular  nation,  or  politi- 
cal group  of  men;  nor  yet  with  the  life  of  all  the 
nations  of  history  taken  together.  Starting  out  with 
the  question,  What  is  the  end  of  social  action  among 
men  ?  we  found  that  to  answer  it  we  must  reduce  social 
action  to  its  elements.  But  in  doing  this  we  were 
inevitably  brought  into  contact  with  social  life  among 
animals  other  than  human.  We  found  that  as  we 
proceeded  with  our  analysis,  the  scope  of  the  inquiry 
was  ever  growing  broader ;  that  its  boundaries  were 
ever  enlarging ;  and  we  were  at  last  brought  to  the 
conviction  that  if  we  are  adequately  to  understand  the 
principles  of  human  society,  we  can  understand  them 


vii  SOCIAL   KINETICS  239 

only  in  the  light  thrown  upon  the  subject  by  principles 
applying  not  only  to  human  society  itself,  but  to  so- 
ciety of  every  other  kind.  In  thus  arriving  at  the 
elements  of  social  action  among  men,  we  arrived  also 
at  the  elements  of  social  action  in  general ;  and  from 
these  elements  are  derived  the  principles  which  under- 
lie the  action  of  society  wherever  it  is  found. 

It  is  manifest  to  the  reader  that  the  foregoing 
chapters  have  been  devoted  altogether  to  the  making 
of  an  analysis  such  as  we  have  described  above. 
And  we  may  say  here,  with  every  assurance  of  cer- 
tainty, that  further  analysis  can  help  us  in  no  manner 
whatsoever.  Search  as  we  may ;  examine  into  the 
physical  and  mental  anatomy  of  living  creatures  with 
the  most  careful  scrutiny ;  lay  open  to  view  the 
causes  which  bring  about  the  association  of  any 
species  of  animals  into  a  definitely  moving  group,  and 
there  will  appear  no  elements  of  action,  no  principle 
of  social  growth,  other  than  those  laid  down  in  the 
preceding  pages.  We  have  discovered  that  all  living 
creatures  combining  in  a  group,  the  existence  of  which 
secures  for  the  individual  a  freer  and  ampler  life,  are 
moved  to  do  so  by  the  basic  forces  and  functions  of  all 
living  structures  —  the  motives  of  nutrition  and  propa- 
gation. We  have  seen  that  some  groups  are  held 
together  in  consistent  masses  by  a  complex  life  of  the 
mind  issuing  out  of  the  nervous  apparatus  developed 
in  the  evolution  of  the  race ;  and  that  this  thought- 
life  determines  the  character  of  the  outward  life  of 
the  group.  And  we  have  seen,  furthermore,  that  the 
quality  of  the  thought-life  of  the  group,  and  the  com- 
plexity of  the  artificial  environment  surrounding  it, 
are  interdependent  one  upon  the  other. 


240  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

Such  are  the  only  elements  into  which  social  motion 
can  be  analyzed.  There  are  no  others. 

Proceeding  from  our  elementary  basis,  we  have 
learned  how  life  forces  unite  into  certain  principles  of 
action.  These  principles  we  discussed  when  treating 
of  the  transmuting  environment  in  the  fixed  place,  of 
the  increasing  capacity  issuing  out  of  it,  and  of  the 
involutions  and  convolutions  of  a  social  group  arising 
from  the  play  of  the  thought-life  and  the  environment 
functioning  together.  These  are  the  fundamental 
principles  of  social  life,  and  there  are  no  others.  All 
the  phenomena  of  a  highly  developed,  freely  moving 
society,  whether  human  or  not,  can  be  brought  within 
the  scope  of  these  fundamental  conceptions. 

As  we  rise  in  the  scale  of  social  life,  we  find  that 
the  scale  is  not  based  upon  the  same  facts  as  is  the 
scale  of  organic  life  itself.  Looking  at  life  itself,  we 
note  that  its  scale  is  determined  by  the  vital  apparatus 
of  the  organism.  Thus  we  can  trace  the  graduation 
of  living  forms  from  man,  the  highest  and  most  com- 
plex of  the  mammals,  down  to  the  single-celled  organ- 
ism which  seems  to  be  no  more  than  a  mere  tiny 
lump  of  watery  matter  with  no  organization  save  that 
of  the  simplest  conceivable.  Between  the  two  ex- 
tremes —  man  at  the  apex  of  the  pyramid,  and  the 
moneron  at  the  base  —  lie  all  intermediate  forms  of 
life,  one  succeeding  another  in  imperceptible  grada- 
tions, clearly  showing  forth  a  definite  and  conspicuous 
order  of  arrangement,  and  suggesting  a  cousinship 
of  structure  which  occurred  to  the  mind  of  Immanuel 
Kant,  and  which  was  demonstrated  by  the  minds  of 
Charles  Darwin  and  Alfred  Russell  Wallace. 

Such  is  the  basis  of  the  life  scale.     But  the  basis 


vii  SOCIAL  KINETICS  241 

of  the  social  scale  is  something  very  different.  That 
scale  is  dependent,  in  one  way,  on  the  vital  apparatus 
of  the  individual  organism,  and  it  is  independent  of  it 
in  another.  The  basis  of  the  social  scale  is  therefore 
twofold.  Its  double  aspect  is  found  in  the  organism 
of  the  individual —  on  which  the  life  scale  is  based  — 
and  in  the  spatial  relation  of  the  social  group  to  the 
environment.  If  the  group  moves  about  from  one 
place  to  another,  it  is  low  in  the  social  scale.  If  it 
lives  in  one  fixed  place,  it  is  high.  Thus  it  is  that  a 
group  may  be  very  low  in  the  life  scale,  while  it  is 
very  high  in  the  social  scale,  and  vice  versa. 

Having  understood  these  truths  in  all  their  signifi- 
cance, we  are  now  prepared  to  study  man  and  his 
institutions  in  the  light  thrown  upon  our  subject  by 
this  new  and  forceful  method ;  but  before  we  open 
up  this  fruitful  study,  let  us  lay  down  our  funda- 
mental conceptions  in  a  definite  and  orderly  manner. 
Leaving  out  of  the  account  all  considerations  of  the 
social  scale,  save  in  so  far  as  it  applies  to  human 
groups,  we  can  draw  up  our  analysis  into  a  synthesis 
of  four  fundamental  laws  of  social  life  under  which 
may  be  grouped  all  the  phenomena  of  human  society. 
These  laws  are  as  follows  :  — 

I.  THE  LAW  OF  INDIVIDUAL  PURPOSE. 

The  individual  man,  living  in  a  group  of  similar 
individuals,  is  moved  to  action,  first,  by  his  desire  to 
secure  food  for  the  sustentation  of  his  body,  and, 
secondly,  by  the  desire  in  the  gratification  of  which 
the  race  is  maintained. 

II.  THE  LAW  OF  MORAL  PROXIMATION. 

In  pursuing  this  twofold  purpose  the  individual 
finds  that  his  actions  are  constantly  limited  by  the 


242  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

conduct  of  similar  individuals  seeking  to  gratify  simi- 
lar desires.  Sometimes  this  conduct  is  helpful  to 
his  purpose,  sometimes  it  is  hurtful.  When  it  is 
helpful  he  experiences  pleasure ;  when  hurtful,  pain. 
Conduct  of  the  first  kind  he  deems  bad,  or  wrong. 
But  he  finds,  again,  that  a  certain  measure  of  re- 
straint laid  upon  the  conduct  of  all  is  helpful  for  the 
purpose  of  each.  And  within  that  measure,  what- 
ever helps  the  pursuit  of  the  purpose  is  right ;  what- 
ever hurts  it  is  wrong.  But  from  this  moral  law 
there  flows  another.  The  moral  value  of  any  act  is 
measured  by  its  proximity  to  the  very  purpose  itself. 
The  importance  of  an  act,  in  its  Tightness  or  wrong- 
ness,  increases  as  it  helps  or  hinders  the  pursuit  of 
the  individual's  happiness.  If  the  act  lies  close  to 
life  and  its  functions,  its  moral  value  is  high ;  if  the 
act  lies  remote  from  life,  its  moral  value  is  low.  So 
it  is  that  murder  is  deemed  the  highest  wrong,  because 
it  puts  an  end  at  once  to  pursuit  and  purpose  alike  ; 
while  charity  is  deemed  the  highest  good,  because  it 
relieves  the  individual  of  the  necessity  of  pursuit,  and 
gives  him  the  power  of  living  without  labor. 

III.  THE  LAW  OF  THE  CUMULATIVE  ENVIRONMENT. 
The  purpose  of  the  individual  is  best  served  when 

the  group  of  which  he  is  a  part  lives  in  a  fixed  place, 
upon  which  accumulates  the  wealth  produced  by 
social  energy.  This  relation  to  the  environment  is  a 
necessary  condition  of  social  progress,  economic, 
moral,  intellectual,  and  aesthetic. 

IV.  THE  LAW  OF  THE  INCREMENTAL  CAPACITY. 
The   individual   secures  his  purpose  by  attaching 

to  himself  as  much  of  the  total  wealth  of  the  group 
as  the  common  moral  force  will  allow.  His  capacity 


vii  SOCIAL  KINETICS  243 

for  use  of  the  wealth  appropriated  depends  upon  the 
length  of  time  the  wealth  has  been  in  his  possession. 
But  his  psychic  capacity  for  ownership  is  not  thus 
limited.  The  only  limitation  of  the  psychic  capacity 
is  the  limit  of  all  the  wealth  appropriable.  But  the 
action  of  the  psychic  capacity  is  limited  by  the  moral 
sense  of  the  group,  which  sets  up  a  rearrangement 
of  wealth,  dividing  it  into  the  two  categories  of  private 
and  public  property.  To  this  process,  functioning 
in  the  environment,  we  have  given  the  name  of 
"  incrementation." 

These  are  the  four  great  links  in  the  chain  of 
human  progress.  They  are  the  foundations  upon 
which  human  civilization  rests,  and  the  forces  that 
are  moulding  the  rising  structure.  It  is  the  pur- 
pose of  the  present  chapter  to  consider  the  direc- 
tion in  which  these  forces  are  carrying  society  for- 
ward and  the  end  toward  which  the  motion  tends. 
We  have,  therefore,  entitled  this  chapter  "  Social 
Kinetics."  Kinetic  energy  is  energy  translated  into 
motion,  so  that  the  term  "  social  kinetics  "  may  be  used 
to  describe  social  energy  in  motion.  What  is  the  direc- 
tion of  this  motion,  and  what  is  the  nature  of  its  end  ? 

Of  course,  if  we  exempt  human  society  from  the 
domain  of  natural  law  (and  by  that  term  is  meant  the 
regular  sequence  of  natural  cause  and  effect),  there 
is  no  answer  whatever  to  the  question  —  at  least  no 
answer  such  as  human  ingenuity  can  demonstrate  to 
itself.  But  even  if  no  such  contention  is  made,  the 
outlook  would  be  scarcely  more  promising  if  we  had 
no  grounds  for  knowledge  save  those  found  in  human 
history  thus  far  observed.  We  can  go  farther.  We 
can  say,  without  fear  of  tumultuous  contradiction, 


244  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

that  human  history  gives  us  no  grounds  whatever 
for  the  belief  that  human  society  is  tending  toward 
any  end  at  all.  We  have  seen  what  the  two  great 
expositors  of  social  philosophy  have  accomplished 
when  they  have  dealt  with  the  subject  with  no  basis 
of  prevision  beyond  social  man  himself.  Mr. 
Spencer,  equipped  with  the  profoundest  intellect  of 
the  ages,  has  split  upon  the  rock  of  his  own  theory 
of  individuation.  Karl  Marx,  who  has  taken  the 
opposite  theory  of  socialization,  leaves  his  philosophy 
with  such  tremendous  gaps  in  it  that  we  are  com- 
pelled to  place  him  altogether  in  the  ranks  of  the 
reformers  and  leave  him  there  —  the  best  of  socialists 
with  a  programme,  but  very  little  more. 

The  author  of  this  book  is  fully  alive  to  the  diffi- 
culties which  have  confronted  his  predecessors,  and 
he  is  no  less  aware  of  the  genuine  bitterness  of  feel- 
ing prevailing  between  the  two  hostile  camps.  But 
he  is  convinced  also  that  hostility  is  distinctly  out  of 
place  among  scholars.  Losing  our  temper  will  never 
enable  us  to  perceive  the  true  motion  of  the  stars. 
All  we  do  here  is  to  offer  a  new  method  of  account- 
ing for  human  facts.  We  are  not  in  love  with  our 
theory,  on  the  one  hand,  and  we  have  no  programme 
to  offer  on  the  other.  The  author  is  utterly  indiffer- 
ent to  the  reception  his  theory  will  win  from  the 
public,  —  if  it  win  any  at  all,  —  and  he  is  equally  care- 
less of  criticism  save  that  which  can  show  that  his 
premises  are  false  and  that  his  conclusions  are  irra- 
tional. But  he  is  prepared  to  accept  the  last  conse- 
quences of  that  kind  of  criticism.  He  shall  surrender 
his  theory  upon  the  presentation  of  a  single  fact  of  social 
life  —  human  or  otherwise — which  is  seen  irreconcil- 


vn  SOCIAL   KINETICS  245 

ably  to  be  out  of  harmony  with  his  highest  generaliza- 
tion. But  let  us  return  to  the  matter  in  hand. 

Social  philosophers,  as  we  have  said,  have  been 
somewhat  in  the  position  of  a  man  who  is  trying  to 
discover  the  end  or  the  motions  of  a  stream  by  fol- 
lowing the  stream  from  its  source,  and  failing  to 
observe  the  conduct  of  other  streams.  Such  an 
observer  could  follow  the  stream  halfway,  or  even 
three-quarters  of  the  way,  upon  its  course.  He  would 
certainly  conclude  that  there  must  be  some  end  to 
all  these  various  activities  and  manifold  turnings. 
He  would  learn,  after  a  time,  that  in  following  the 
stream  he  had  been  carried  progressively  in  one 
direction ;  and  that,  through  the  numerous  bends  of 
the  current,  he  could  draw  a  straight  line  to  its 
source.  Yet  had  he  never  seen  the  sea,  it  is  mani- 
fest that  he  could  form  no  true  conception  of  the 
stream's  ultimate  end  and  destination.  His  concep- 
tion of  the  end  of  the  motion  would  be  that  which 
he  could  make  from  the  observation  of  the  facts 
before  him — that  the  end  of  action  in  the  stream 
was  the  very  process  of  flowing  on. 

If,  now,  the  same  observer  were  to  find  other 
streams,  very  like  one  another  in  all  essential  par- 
ticulars, is  it  not  clear  that  he  would  form  the  same 
conception  of  them  all?  A  stream,  for  him,  would 
mean  ceaseless  flow  without  any  end  other  than  its 
fluxion.  But  let  us  say  that  he  has  followed  one 
stream  —  only  one  —  to  its  mouth,  and  has  seen  it 
empty  its  waters  into  the  sea ;  would  he  not  at  once 
feel  sure  that  all  other  streams,  essentially  the  same 
as  the  first,  conducted  themselves  in  the  same  manner, 
and  flowed  forward  to  the  same  or  to  a  similar  outlet  ? 


246  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

All  that  is  wanting  to  accomplish  a  generalization 
such  as  this  for  the  flow  of  human  society  is  the 
spectacle  of  another  society  —  the  same  in  its  essen- 
tial actions  —  in  which  the  end  of  the  flow  is  seen 
spread  out  before  us.  Such  society,  as  the  reader 
already  knows,  is  found  in  a  group  of  honey-bees, 
the  social  state  of  which  has  been  produced  by  the 
same  basic  forces  as  those  which  have  wrought  out 
the  civilization  of  mankind. 

We  can  do  no  better,  then,  when  studying  human 
society,  than  to  keep  before  us  the  social  state  of  the 
hive-bee  as  an  example  of  completed  social  growth ; 
as  an  example  of  that  social  equilibrium  which,  other 
things  being  equal,  must  be  the  only  equilibrium  at 
which  social  motion,  flowing  in  a  right  line,  can  come 
to  an  end.  The  bee  is  a  simple  animal  compared 
with  man.  A  bee-group  is  simple  as  compared  with 
human  groups  which,  like  those  of  the  bee,  live  in  a 
fixed  place.  But  if  motives  of  nutrition  and  propa- 
gation have  carried  the  bee  to  that  dead  level  of 
social  growth  found  in  the  hive,  is  it  not  clear  that 
the  selfsame  motives  must  carry  man  to  the  self- 
same level,  modified,  of  course,  by  the  factor  of  man's 
more  complex  body  and  more  numerous  desires  ? 

We  must  once  again  direct  attention  to  the  social 
state  of  the  hymenoptera.  There  is  no  development 
of  any  kind  in  societies  of  bees.  The  fertility  of  the 
queen  bee  determines  the  number  to  which  the 
population  can  rise.  The  only  menace  to  the  life 
purpose  lies  in  undue  increase  of  population.  There- 
fore, if  there  be  any  moral  ideas  in  the  ganglia  of 
these  insects,  they  are  associated  with  matters  of 
reproduction.  The  person  of  the  queen  —  or  the 


VII  SOCIAL   KINETICS  247 

essential  social  instrument  of  propagation  —  is  the 
most  "  sacred  "  thing  in  the  estimation  of  all  of  the 
integers  of  the  group.  When  there  is  danger  of  over- 
population—  and  hence  of  social  life — in  multiplicity 
of  queens,  all  but  one  are  destroyed.  But  the  idea 
of  destroying  a  queen  is  the  most  repugnant  idea 
possible  to  the  bees  who  carry  on  the  economic 
industry  of  the  hive.  These  never  touch  the  person 
of  a  queen  save  with  manifestations  of  the  highest 
respect  and  solicitude.  Rival  queens  are  permitted  to 
kill  one  another,  but  no  worker  ever  takes  more  than 
spectator's  interest  in  such  combats.  So  deep  seated 
is  this  conception  in  the  nature  of  the  insect,  that 
two  queens,  when  left  alone  to  contest  the  supremacy 
of  the  hive,  are  often  panic  stricken  when  they  face 
each  other  for  the  decisive  battle,  and  fly  from  each 
other  with  every  sign  of  alarm.  They  seem  suddenly 
to  realize  that  mutual  destruction  would  defeat  the 
very  purpose  of  the  mortal  trial  itself,  and  that  the 
highest  possible  evil  would  result,  namely,  the  death 
of  the  community  itself,  beside  which  the  death  of 
any  individual  —  queen  or  drone  or  worker  —  would 
be  insignificant  by  comparison. 

The  bee-group  is  ever  confronted  with  danger  of 
destruction  by  over  population.  With  them,  there- 
fore, the  idea  of  the  highest  right  is  associated  with 
acts  which  preserve  the  equilibrium  of  the  society 
with  its  environment,  and  so  conserve  the  liberty  of 
each  and  of  all.  To  maintain  that  equilibrium  per- 
petual vigilance  is  needed  and  is  not  found  to  be 
wanting.  Of  secondary  importance  is  the  proper 
feeding  of  the  young.  Bees  attend  to  the  wants  of 
their  young  with  a  care  and  a  tenderness  of  ministra- 


248  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

tion  not  excelled  by  those  of  any  human  mother,  and 
not  approached  by  those  of  most  parents  among  men. 
The  proletary  is  reared  with  scientific  and  intelligent 
purpose;  and  moral  perceptions  of  a  high  order 
attend  the  process.  The  method  of  distribution  of 
the  social  economic  product  is  such  as  to  be  mechan- 
ically self-adjusting.  Any  disturbance  of  the  mechan- 
ism would  result  in  confusion  and  destruction  of  the 
groupal  life.  And  we  can  hardly  be  charged  with 
hyperbole  when  we  say  that  bees  never  think  of  mak- 
ing a  change  in  that  method.  Hence  we  may  say 
that  the  state  of  a  bee-group  is  the  norm  of  social 
motion,  or  the  level  at  which  all  progress  has  come 
to  an  end. 

It  will  be  drawing  no  analogy  to  assert  that  such 
level  is  the  end  toward  which  human  social  forces 
flow.  We  do  not  mean  to  say  that  human  society 
ever  will  or  ever  can  carry  on  its  propagation  in  the 
same  way  as  do  bees,  or  that  human  society  will  ever 
be  confronted  by  a  similar  menace  from  increase  in 
numbers.  The  only  menace  from  increasing  popu- 
lation which  can  disturb  human  society  is  that  in- 
volved in  the  quantity  of  available  food.  At  the 
present  time  an  increase  of  population  is  desirable  in 
the  most  advanced  communities.  By  "advanced 
communities,"  we  do  not  mean  the  older  civilizations 
of  Europe,  but  their  colonies.  If  antiquity  of  civili- 
zation were  implied  by  the  term  "advanced,"  then 
China  and  India  would  be  the  foremost  communities 
of  the  world.  By  "advanced"  we  intend  to  indicate 
those  human  groups  in  which  the  method  of  divid- 
ing wealth  has  been  changed  so  as  to  more  nearly 
approach  the  method  which  is  socially  organic  with 


vil  SOCIAL   KINETICS  249 

bees.  We  shall  reserve  the  question  of  the  propaga- 
tive  adjustment  of  society  for  discussion  in  another 
place.  Here  it  is  needful  only  to  consider  the  motion 
of  human  society  toward  the  level  of  wealth-division, 
which  shall  present  a  perfect  equilibrium  of  moral 
ideas  with  the  economic  life  of  the  group. 

What,  now,  are  the  observed  facts  in  human  social 
motion  ?  Is  it  flowing  in  the  direction  of  a  norm 
similar  to  that  found  in  societies  of  bees  ?  To  answer 
the  question  rationally,  we  should  ask  if  the  motive 
forces  are  the  same  in  the  two  orders  of  social 
phenomena.  If  there  be  any  manifest  difference 
in  the  nature  of  the  norm,  it  should  have  to  be  ac- 
counted for  by  some  perturbing  force.  And  if  this 
perturbing  force  be  found,  then  the  very  perturba- 
tion itself  is  only  an  additional  proof  that  the  two 
orders  of  phenomena  are  included  in  the  same 
law. 

The  motive  forces  in  the  societies  of  bees  will  be  ad- 
mitted to  be  those  of  nutrition  and  propagation.  The 
play  of  these  forces  has  brought  bee-groups  to  the 
norm  in  which  we  find  them.  And  everywhere,  in 
social  growth,  we  see  that  the  same  forces  have 
carried  groups  of  men  in  very  much  the  same  direc- 
tion. A  fatal  objection  would  be  found  to  this  theory 
if,  anywhere,  there  could  be  pointed  out  a  society  in 
which  progress  was  attended  by  action  in  the  oppo- 
site direction.  The  proposition  contradicts  itself, 
indeed,  for  in  the  very  definition  of  social  progress 
we  have  seen  that  its  essence  consists  of  larger  lib- 
erties for  larger  numbers.  To  say  that  there  has 
been  social  progress  in  any  group  wherein  the  liber- 
ties of  the  masses  have  been  continually  and  increas- 


250  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

ingly  contracted,  is  absurd.  And  as  such  liberties 
can  be  expanded  only  by  the  expansion  of  the  wealth 
of  individuals,  it  follows  that  this  process  has  gone 
forward  in  all  communities  where  social  progress 
is  visible,  and  that  it  continues  to  go  forward  now. 
This  truth  needs  no  argument  to  support  it.  It  is 
fundamental.  In  this  much,  then,  the  direction  of 
social  motion  in  human  societies  can  be  described  by 
a  right  line  drawn  to  an  economic  norm  precisely 
similar  to  that  of  bees. 

But  this  line  will  not  describe  the  direction  in 
which  human  social  motion  flows  when  it  is  the 
propagative  norm  that  is  considered.  There  is  hence 
some  force  which  perturbs  the  motion,  and  which, 
in  its  effect,  should  produce  a  norm  in  human  society 
which  should  differ  from  that  of  bees  in  precisely  tJiat 
character  produced  by  this  perturbing  force  itself.  That 
character  can  only  be  the  reproductive  character  of 
the  race.  In  their  nutritive  characters,  man  and  bee 
are  precisely  the  same.  There  is  no  essential  differ- 
ence in  the  method  by  which  assimilation  is  secured 
in  the  human  and  the  apis.  The  bee  obtains  its  food 
from  the  environment,  consumes  it,  and  assimilates 
it.  This  is  a  fundamental  law  of  vital  growth,  animal 
and  vegetal.  But  the  social  factor  enters  into  the 
question,  and  it  is  with  that  we  are  dealing  here. 
Societies  of  bees  and  societies  of  men  use  identical 
methods  in  \heirproductive  economic  life.  It  is  only 
in  their  methods  of  the  division  of  their  wealth  that 
they  differ. 

We  have  seen  that  the  change  in  the  method  of 
distribution  among  men  progresses  in  a  right  line 
toward  the  norm  of  distribution  observed  in  groups 


vii  SOCIAL   KINETICS  25 1 

of  bees.  This  is  true  because  there  is  no  difference 
in  their  methods  of  economic  production  and  assimila- 
tion, socially  considered.  But  the  motion  of  human 
society  toward  the  propagative  norm  is  perturbed  by 
the  difference  between  men  and  bees  in  the  method 
by  which  propagation  is  procured.  So  that  while 
we  may  look  for  an  economic  norm  in  societies  of 
men  precisely  similar  to  that  of  bees,  we  should  look 
for  a  propagative  norm  somewhat  different  in  detail 
of  method,  but  very  murh  the  same  in  the  complete 
result.  In  other  words  we  must  look  for  a  propaga- 
tive norm  in  societies  of  men  which  shall  be  secured 
by  some  method  directly  concerned  with  the  vivipa- 
rous character  of  man,  as  we  find  that  it  is  secured 
by  a  method  directly  involved  with  the  oviparous 
character  of  the  bee.  The  very  great  fertility  of  the 
fully  developed  female  apis  rapidly  leads  to  the  es- 
tablishment of  the  propagative  norm,  and  makes 
easy  the  preservation  of  a  normal  population.  The 
other  extreme  of  fertility  in  the  human  female  renders 
the  process  of  equilibration  less  rapid.  With  men 
the  great  menace  has  always  been  an  under-supply 
of  food  rather  than  over-population ;  whereas  with 
bees  the  food-danger  is  always  at  the  minimum  while 
the  population-danger  is  always  at  the  maximum.  As 
it  is  with  the  economic  norm  we  are  presently  dealing, 
we  will  examine  the  direction  of  the  motion  in  which 
economic  forces  flow  in  societies  of  men,  reserving 
the  discussion  of  the  reproductive  norm  for  its  appo- 
site place.  We  must  note,  however,  that  the  differ- 
ence between  the  twofold  norm  of  the  bee  and  the 
twofold  norm  of  man,  as  difference  there  must  be, 
of  course,  will  be  accounted  for  by  the  perturbing 


252  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

force  in  human  society  found  in  the  method  by  which 
the  race  is  maintained. 

It  is  scarcely  needful  to  point  out  that  an  inquiry 
which  deals  with  economic  progress,  in  the  direction 
we  have  discussed,  will  have  to  use  as  its  principal 
instrument  the  category  of  things  which  have  been 
called  wealth.  To  underestimate  the  value  of  wealth 
is  as  dangerous  to  healthful  and  useful  social  theory, 
as  to  underestimate  the  ethical  or  intellectual  aspect 
of  man's  nature.  Indeed,  the  one  underestimation 
involves  the  others.  The  seemingly  moral  superiority 
of  some  savage  societies,  say  the  Veddahs,  is  not  real 
superiority  at  all.  The  delicately  sensitive  ethical 
consciousness  of  the  Veddah  or  the  Hawaiian  is  no 
indication  that  these  societies  are  superior  to  Euro- 
pean societies,  any  more  than  the  perfectly  balanced 
ethics  of  the  bees  can  be  said  to  be  an  indication  of 
the  superiority  of  bee-societies  over  those  of  men. 
The  relations  of  the  Veddah  or  the  Hawaiian  to  the 
environment  are  profoundly  simple  as  compared  with 
similar  relations  in  highly  civilized  communities.  If 
ethical  progress  in  civilized  groups  has  been  slower 
than  in  these  savage  peoples,  it  is  because  the  quan- 
tity of  wealth  is  immeasurably  greater  in  the  one 
than  in  the  other.  If  we  suppose  that  the  ethical 
perceptions  of  Europe  were  perfect,  we  could  hardly 
compare  the  quantity  of  ethical  consciousness  of  the 
savage  and  civilized  states.  It  requires  little  contact 
with  civilization  to  break  down  the  ethical  concepts 
of  a  people  like  the  Veddahs.  But  such  peoples  do 
not  become  "  corrupt "  because  the  civilized  men  with 
whom  they  are  thrown  are  more  immoral  than  they. 
They  become  immoral  because  the  new  wealth  added 


vii  SOCIAL  KINETICS  253 

to  their  environments  by  civilization  disturbs  the  ethi- 
cal balance  made  possible  by  the  former  simple  en- 
vironmental state. 

Civilization,  itself,  consists  of  nothing  but  the 
quantity  and  variety  of  the  wealth  of  a  community 
and  the  ideas  —  ethical,  economic,  aesthetic,  and  intel- 
lectual —  which  this  wealth  produces,  enlarges,  and 
preserves.  Wealth  must  therefore  be  the  chief 
instrument  of  investigation  in  any  inquiry  into  the 
flow  of  social  forces  toward  moral  and  economic 
equilibrium.  To  say  that  wealth  is  only  a  fit  thing 
to  despise  will  be  suicidal  from  no  matter  what  point 
of  view  we  consider  it.  It  cannot  consistently  be 
contemned  by  the  intellectual  man;  for  he  should 
know  that  it  is  the  quintessential  of  scientific  prog- 
ress. It  cannot  be  disregarded  by  the  aesthetic  man ; 
for  he  should  know  that  all  perceptions  of  harmony, 
whether  of  natural  or  of  artificial  beauty,  are  strength- 
ened by  its  use.  It  cannot  be  minimized  by  the 
moral  man,  for  he  should  know  that  the  possession 
of  wealth  enables  its  owner  to  encompass  that  act 
approved  by  the  highest  ethics  as  being  the  most 
righteous  act  that  any  man  can  do,  and  that  is  to 
bestow  wealth  in  charity.  Even  the  Hindoo  Yogi, 
who  is  as  far  from  being  utilitarian  as  one  can  well 
conceive,  nevertheless  in  his  precepts  concerns  him- 
self largely  with  the  question  of  wealth.  If  we  re- 
move the  idea  of  wealth  from  the  philosophy  of  any 
of  the  great  reformers,  it  will  be  found  that  not 
much  remains  of  their  maxims  save  those  which 
apply  to  life  itself,  and  life  itself  is  dependent  upon 
the  creation  of  wealth  and  its  distribution  among 
men.  When,  therefore,  we  discuss  wealth  as  one 


254  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

of  the  fundamental  conceptions  of  social  progress, 
we  are  consciously  doing  only  that  which  is  uncon- 
sciously done  by  those  who  affect  to  despise  it. 

The  various  motions  by  which  human  society  is 
carried  forward  flow  along  lines  converging  to  an 
equal  division  of  the  environment.  Stating  the 
proposition  in  more  explicit  terms,  the  whole  quantity 
of  wealth  is  distributed  among  individuals  in  parts 
more  nearly  equal  as  social  progress  goes  on.  Only 
a  moment's  reflection  is  needed  to  show  the  truth 
of  this  proposition.  The  current  idea  expressed  in 
the  proverb  that  the  rich  are  growing  richer  while 
the  poor  are  growing  poorer,  is  only  true  in  so  far 
as  men's  ideas  of  wealth  and  its  possession  are  con- 
cerned. Poverty,  even  in  comparative  degree,  is 
now  far  more  repugnant  to  the  mind  of  men  than 
was  absolute  poverty  not  so  very  long  ago.  A  few 
centuries  since,  the  possession  of  a  pair  of  shoes 
was  considered  a  mark  of  comparative  wealth  in 
Europe ;  while  at  the  present  time  the  want  of  a 
pair  of  shoes  is  deemed  a  mark  of  indigence.  This 
is  the  fact  because  the  absolute  increase  of  wealth 
has  been  accompanied  by  an  increasingly  equable 
division.  The  method  of  distribution  has  rapidly 
changed.  The  increment  of  use-capacity  in  men 
has  been  enlarged  by  additions  to  the  possessions 
of  larger  numbers  of  individuals.  The  enlarged 
capacity  has  so  widely  extended  desires  for  larger 
possessions,  that  what  seemed  to  be  riches  not  very 
long  ago  seems  to  be  poverty  now.  It  is  by  the 
enlarged  capacities  of  men  that  riches  and  poverty 
are  now  gauged ;  and  thus  it  would  seem  to  highly 
sensitive  ethical  perceptions,  created  by  this  very 


vii  SOCIAL   KINETICS  355 

change  of  method,  that  the  poor  are  growing  poorer ; 
whereas  the  truth  is  that,  measured  by  the  ethical 
perceptions  of  former  times,  they  are  extraordinarily 
rich. 

These  effects  have  been  wrought  out  by  the  use  to 
which  wealth  has  been  put.  When  the  environment 
shifted  from  the  moving  to  the  fixed  locality,  all 
wealth  and  all  ideas  of  wealth  became,  as  we  have 
seen,  multiplied  extensively  and  intensively.  All 
forms  of  wealth  expanded  in  quantity  and  in  com- 
plexity. It  was  only  with  the  rise  of  true  agriculture 
that  true  capital  and  ideas  of  true  capital  became 
possible.  By  the  term  "capital"  we  understand,  of 
course,  that  part  of  wealth  used  for  the  creation 
of  new  wealth.  Men  discovered  a  new  use  for 
plants  and  seeds,  and  for  animals.  By  refraining 
from  the  consumption  of  these  as  food  and  clothing, 
it  was  found  that  larger  quantities  of  food  and  cloth- 
ing could  be  secured  with  far  less  effort  than  before. 
This  method  of  production  soon  became  organic  in 
society,  and  the  category  of  true  capital  arose.  But 
once  that  this  idea  became  permanently  fixed,  it  was 
clear  that  this  particular  form  of  wealth  would  be 
the  one  most  desired. 

Wealth  which  multiplied  itself  vt&i,  more  desirable 
than  merely  consumable  wealth,  for  the  reason  that 
its  possession  enabled  its  owner  to  increase  the  quan- 
tity of  his  possessions  of  every  kind.  Capital  could 
not  only  be  used  for  the  creation  of  new  wealth,  but 
likewise  for  the  creation  of  new  capital.  In  primitive 
societies  capital  was  largely,  if  not  altogether,  of  an 
agricultural  kind.  As  the  category  became  enlarged, 
human  beings  were  added  to  it;  and  with  the  rise 


256  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

of  manufacturing  industries,  the  nature  of  capital 
would  become  more  and  more  complex,  while  its 
quantity  would  be  correspondingly  increased. 

One  of  the  most  important  discoveries  of  society, 
and  one  which  was  made  very  early,  was  that  certain 
parts  of  capital  could  be  put  to  a  use  which,  while 
not  itself  creative  of  wealth,  vastly  facilitated  the 
methods  by  which  that  creation  was  brought  about. 
This  was  the  discovery  of  money.  It  was,  like  every 
other  discovery,  merely  the  perception  of  a  new 
relation  of  the  environment  of  man.  It  was  an  in- 
dividual perception  at  first.  But  it  at  once  became 
social  because  its  value  to  the  individual  was  nothing 
so  long  as  he  kept  it  to  himself.  Things  which  could 
be  used  in  this  way  would  now  become  the  most 
desirable  parts  of  the  environment,  because  those  pos- 
sessing them  could  acquire  at  will  wealth  for  use 
as  capital  or  wealth  for  use  in  consumption.  But  as 
capital  always  was,  and  is  now,  the  most  desirable 
form  of  wealth,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  most  desirable 
purpose  of  money  was  its  use  as  capital.  And  this 
desirability  has  been  so  intimately  associated  with 
the  things  used  as  money,  that  the  term  "  capital  "  is 
now  commonly  used  as  meaning  money,  and  not 
as  meaning  true  capital  as  that  term  is  used  by 
economists. 

With  the  rise  of  metallic  money,  following  the  rise 
of  the  metallic  arts,  came  rapidly  increasing  cumula- 
tion of  wealth  and  no  less  rapidly  increasing  incre- 
ments of  economic,  moral,  and  psychic  capacity.  The 
effect  of  money  upon  society  was  highly  expansive. 
Individuals  found  that  the  life  purpose  was  vastly 
helped  or  hindered  by  the  possession  of  money  or 


vii  SOCIAL   KINETICS  257 

the  want  of  it.  Metallic  money,  giving  to  man  a  safe 
and  imperishable  instrument  with  which  to  convert 
one  kind  of  wealth  into  another,  at  the  same  time 
became  an  instrument  of  moral  progress  and  gave 
a  tremendous  impetus  to  intellect  and  to  art.  The 
discovery  of  money  had  another  effect  upon  social 
progress  directly  concerned  with  the  purpose  of  the 
inquiry  we  are  now  pursuing.  Capital  was  the  most 
desirable  part  of  wealth,  and  money  the  most  desir- 
able part  of  capital ;  but  money  was  also  the  one 
instrument  by  which  the  growing  increment  of  ethics 
was  satisfied.  For  it  served  readily  to  bring  about 
those  changes  in  the  method  of  distribution  whereby 
larger  shares  of  capital  fell  to  larger  numbers  of  indi- 
viduals. Money  became  the  all-essential  element  of 
power  of  whatever  kind.  Power  of  any  kind,  in  fact, 
could  not  exist  without  it.  Its  possession  was  as  neces- 
sary to  the  king  as  to  his  meanest  subject.  It  could 
buy  armies  or  encompass  the  death  of  the  strong  man 
quickly  and  safely.  But  these  were  mere  subsidiary 
and  confluent  forces  of  its  function.  Its  true  function 
was  the  limitation  it  placed  upon  the  power  of  a  few 
men  to  acquire  larger  shares  of  wealth  than  the  moral 
standards  approved. 

This  money-limitation  of  the  psychic  capacity  lay 
in  the  fact  that  the  quantity  of  good  money  was  itself 
limited  in  any  community.  The  latent  power  of 
money  enabled  its  possessor  to  defer  the  gratification 
of  his  desires  to  such  time  as  he  had  accumulated 
sufficient  of  it  to  act  upon  the  environment  in  the 
capacity  of  a  capitalist.  In  this  way  the  number  of 
capitalists  would  tend  constantly  to  enlarge.  It  is 
not  difficult  to  perceive  the  truth  of  this  assertion. 


258  THE  LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

The  laborer,  earning  a  little  more  than  was  needed 
for  sustenance,  could  set  aside  a  portion  of  his  wages 
for  future  use  as  capital.  Now  if  he  were  paid  only 
in  real  wages,  —  that  is,  in  food,  clothing,  and  lodging, 
and  the  other  things  commonly  used  by  him,  —  it  is 
manifest  that  he  could  not  quite  easily  lay  up  por- 
tions of  these  for  future  use.  But  if  he  were  paid  in 
money,  and  especially  in  imperishable  money,  this 
process  of  saving  would  not  only  be  easy  but  would 
be  produced  and  developed  by  the  very  character  of 
the  wages  themselves.  There  would  thus  operate  a 
force  by  which  larger  numbers  of  individuals  would 
be  enabled  to  accumulate  from  the  current  fund 
quantities  of  money  which,  when  they  became  suf- 
ficiently large,  would  be  transformed  from  consump- 
tion-money into  capital-money.  But  at  the  very 
moment  when  the  accumulator  of  consumption-money 
would  transform  his  fund  into  capital,  that  fund  would 
flow  back  again  into  the  hands  of  laborers  and  would 
begin  over  again  the  process  of  accumulation  for  use 
as  capital  in  the  future.  Thus  we  see  that  the  very 
satisfaction  of  the  desire  to  secure  greater  shares  of 
wealth  acts,  of  its  own  force,  in  a  manner  to  enable 
increasingly  large  numbers  to  secure  increasingly  large 
shares  for  themselves.  And  by  this  process  the  method 
of  distribution  would  be  so  altered  as  to  carry  society 
forward  toward  the  norm  in  which  the  total  product 
would  be  equally  divided  between  all  the  producers, 
That  this  would  be  the  natural  result  of  the  action 
of  human  desires,  when  coupled  with  an  instrument 
for  their  gratification  like  that  found  in  money,  there 
cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt.  As  the  more  wealthy 
capitalists  would  use  money  almost  solely  for  the 


vii  SOCIAL   KINETICS  259 

creation  of  new  capital,  money  would  flow  to  pro- 
ducers in  ever  increasing  quantities  and  the  number 
of  capitalists  would  thereby  enlarge.  That  part  of 
the  distribution,  carried  on  by  the  process  which  has 
been  called  interest,  would  really  arise  out  of  the 
productive  activities  of  the  group,  because  the  money- 
owner,  who  did  not  himself  become  a  real  capitalist, 
would  indirectly  use  his  wealth  for  productive  pur- 
poses by  lending  it  to  others  who  would  directly  so 
use  it.  For  inasmuch  as  money  is  powerless  except 
when  it  is  used,  the  money-owner  would  be  impelled 
to  use  it  by  parting  with  it,  and  in  doing  that  he 
would  only  assist  in  the  process  whereby  new  wealth 
would  be  more  equally  divided  among  increasingly 
large  numbers  of  individuals. 

In  a  rapidly  developing  society  there  would  arise  a 
tertiary  form  of  capital  which  would  be  a  quaternary 
form  of  wealth.  We  should  look  for  this  tertiary 
form  only  in  societies  in  which  the  economic  environ- 
ment is  highly  complex,  and  we  should  expect  to 
find  it  in  larger  quantities  and  more  general  use  as 
the  complexity  of  the  environment  rose  to  higher  and 
higher  degrees.  It  is  natural,  too,  to  expect  that  the 
value  of  this  new  form  of  capital  would  pertain  more 
and  more  to  the  psychic  capacity  as  kinds  of  wealth 
would  increase.  The  discoveries  of  true  capital,  of 
metallic  money,  and  of  money's  great  potentiality  as 
capital,  were  the  steps  leading  up  to  this  fresh  dis- 
covery of  a  new  relation  to  the  environment.  This 
tertiary  form  of  capital  is  found  in  those  instruments 
of  debit  and  credit  used  for  the  facilitation  of  indus- 
trial progress,  and  it  includes  all  that  class  of  things 
described  generally  by  the  terms  "notes,"  "bills  of 


2(50  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

exchange,"  "stocks,"  "bonds,"  "checks,"  "securities," 
"drafts,"  and  other  instruments  which  take  the  place  of 
actual  money  in  the  processes  of  production  and  ex- 
change. It  will  be  seen  that  the  function  of  these  things 
is  highly  psychic.  They  bear  the  same  relation  to 
money  that  money  bears  to  productive  capital.  They 
give  to  the  capitalist  and  to  the  saver  the  power  of 
quickly  transforming  one  form  of  wealth  into  other 
forms.  So  much  so,  indeed,  that  by  their  use  poten- 
tial wealth  can  be  transformed  into  actual  wealth  even 
before  the  process  of  actual  production  begins. 

But  the  true  purpose  served  by  them  is  the  more 
equable  distribution  of  wealth  which  money,  in  its 
function  as  capital,  began.  Capitalism  could  grow 
much  more  rapidly  after  the  discovery  of  money  than 
before  that  discovery.  And  this  is  true  because  it 
furnished  an  instrument  which,  unlike  the  actual  in- 
struments of  production,  was  not  quickly  perishable, 
and  which  could,  at  any  time,  be  converted  into  those 
actual  instruments.  As  the  latent  energy,  or  poten- 
tiality, of  money  depends  upon  the  psychic  capacity  of 
men,  so  does  the  power  of  the  tertiary  form,  only  in 
higher  degree.  Money  is  the  concrete  symbol  of  the 
property  right ;  and  so  are  all  those  instruments  of 
tertiary  capital  we  have  indicated.  But  these  instru- 
ments are  symbols  of  a  property  right  more  complex 
in  its  nature  than  that  found  in  simpler  societies. 

An  illustration  will  enable  us  to  perceive  how  the 
tertiary  form  of  capital  has  given  freer  play  to  the 
forces  by  which  the  norm  of  equal  division  of  wealth 
is  approached.  In  a  comparatively  simple  society  the 
capitalist  must  be  directly  associated  with  the  things 
he  uses  for  the  creation  of  new  wealth.  So  long  as 


vii  SOCIAL   KINETICS  261 

the  simple  state  prevails  there  must  be  a  compara- 
tively uneven  division  of  wealth.  The  individual 
may  possess  potential  capital,  in  the  form  of  money, 
in  excess  of  the  working  capital  he  uses.  But  money 
cannot  be  retained  by  the  individual  and  at  the  same 
time  used  by  him  in  production.  To  enjoy  the  power 
it  confers  upon  him  he  must  part  with  it.  It  is  useful 
as  a  symbol  of  property  only  when  wealth  is  multi- 
plied by  the  surrender  of  the  money  to  others.  It  is 
clear  that  if  money  could  be  retained  by  its  owner, 
and  at  the  same  time  could  be  used  as  an  instrument 
of  production,  it  would  possess  a  double  desirability. 
A  form  of  capital,  therefore,  which  would  unite  these 
two  characters,  would  be  far  more  desirable  than 
money.  Now  this  very  form  of  capital  is  found  in 
such  an  instrument  as  a  share  of  stock.  Shares  of 
stock,  or  other  similar  instruments  of  capitalization, 
are  infinitely  more  desirable  than  money  for  the  satis- 
faction of  men's  desires  to  possess  as  much  wealth  as 
they  can  possibly  acquire.  If  all  property  rights  were 
symbolized  by  shares  of  stock,  we  can  imagine  an 
industrial  Alexander  who  could  not  be  satisfied  until 
he  possessed  every  share  of  stock  in  existence,  and 
thence  possessed  a  property  right  to  all  the  appro- 
priable wealth  in  the  world.  The  excellence  of  the 
tertiary  form  of  capital  as  an  instrument  for  the  satis- 
faction of  the  ever  increasing  desire  to  own,  would 
therefore  force  its  own  development  in  every  rapidly 
advancing  civilization.  For  the  possessor  of  the 
stock-share  would  find  that  he  could  not  only  retain  it 
in  immediate  contact  with  himself,  but  that  he  could 
also  use  the  power  it  conferred  upon  him  in  the  crea- 
tion of  the  new  wealth  he  desired.  Through  its  use 


262  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

he  would  find  that  it  served  to  enlarge  his  possessions, 
not  indeed  by  parting  with  it,  as  in  the  case  of  money, 
but  by  retaining  it  and  adding  to  its  quantity. 

But  while  it  is  true  that  tertiary  capital  would  thus 
serve  the  purpose  of  the  desires  of  men  to  increase 
their  wealth,  it  would,  like  money,  serve  to  limit  the 
action  by  which  those  desires  were  gratified.  For  if 
money  enabled  larger  numbers  of  men  to  become 
capitalists,  shares  of  stock  have  enabled  increasingly 
larger  numbers  to  become  partners  in  capital  without 
the  necessity  of  coming  into  contact  with  the  things 
actually  used  in  production. 

It  will  hardly  be  contended  that  the  number  of  per- 
sons who,  in  their  capacity  as  shareholders,  are  really 
capitalists,  is  smaller  at  the  present  time  than  was  the 
number  of  capitalists  before  the  rise  of  the  joint  stock 
company.  If  the  stock  company  system  had  not 
served  as  a  better  instrument  of  enlarging  the  wealth 
of  the  rich  capitalists,  it  would  never  have  been  intro- 
duced. And  when  these  capitalists  once  discovered 
that  by  enlarging  the  number  of  their  partners  they 
increased  their  own  possessions,  it  is  probable  that 
they  would  continue  to  trade  shares  of  stock  for  money 
to  be  used  for  the  further  enlargement  of  their  wealth- 
creating  means. 

We  have  used  the  illustration  of  the  joint  stock 
company,  because  it  is  probably  the  best  illustration 
of  the  method  by  which  society  flows  toward  its  norm 
of  equal  division  of  wealth.  Illustrations  of  this 
action  will  be  found  as  readily  in  all  the  other  instru- 
ments used  in  the  mechanism  of  exchange,  and  it  is 
not  needful  that  we  should  go  into  elaborate  detail. 
This  could  be  done  only  by  an  expansion  of  the 


vil  SOCIAL  KINETICS  263 

argument  into  a  volume  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
necessary  discussion  of  principles. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  society,  in  its  kinetic 
aspect,  presents  a  multiplicity  of  phenomena,  which, 
viewed  from  any  standpoint  other  than  the  one  we 
are  using  here,  must  be  inextricably  obscure.  So 
long  as  we  regard  social  facts  as  isolated  ideas,  we 
can  never  hope  to  understand  the  harmony  under- 
lying the  motions  of  society.  If  there  be  no  har- 
mony in  social  action,  then  it  is  useless  to  investigate 
its  phenomena.  If  harmony  exists,  the  purpose  of 
investigation  is  to  discover  wherein  it  consists.  And 
this  can  only  be  done  by  drawing  social  phenomena, 
one  after  another,  into  a  law  of  harmony  which  shall 
disclose  the  relations  of  social  facts  to  one  another. 

The  apparent  want  of  harmony  in  the  motions  of 
society  is  due  only  to  the  apparent  lack  of  purpose 
toward  which  the  motions  converge.  While  the 
direction  seems  here  and  there  to  shift  out  of  the 
line  which  will  carry  society  to  the  norm  we  have 
described,  it  is  only  because  progress  is  hindered  at 
times,  as  at  times  it  is  helped  by  the  character  of  the 
environment.  When  societies  discover  new  relations 
to  the  environment  easing  the  flow  to  the  norm,  the 
action  in  that  direction  is  rapid.  In  societies  in 
which  the  number  of  such  discoveries  is  small,  the 
progress  will  be  slow ;  and  in  those  which  do  not  dis- 
cover any  new  relations  at  all,  there  will  be  no  prog- 
ress whatever. 

The  investigation  is  very  greatly  assisted  by  the 
fact  that  it  has  for  material  many  societies  in  differ- 
ent degrees  of  development.  Some  of  them  are  very 
far  from  the  equilibrium  which  we  have  assumed  to 


264  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

be  the  end  of  social  motion.  Some  of  them  are 
approaching  it  very  slowly  and  painfully.  Some  are 
approaching  it  very  rapidly.  And  at  least  one  of 
the  social  races  —  the  bees  —  has  developed  in  one 
of  its  genera  a  social  state  in  which  the  equilibrium 
is  found  to  be  fully  established,  and  in  which  social 
progress  has  come  to  an  end.  If  this  last-mentioned 
species  of  social  organism  were  composed  of  men,  an 
examination  of  its  historical  development  would  teach 
us  all  that  could  be  known  of  the  law  of  social  growth. 
But  this  is  not  the  fact.  In  so  far  as  it  is  like  men 
in  its  functions,  we  can  use  it  in  the  inquiry,  and 
only  in  so  far.  The  purpose  of  the  investigation  will 
be  better  served  by  considering  all  groups  together 
when  we  are  dealing  with  forces  which  have  devel- 
oped them  all  up  to  the  point  attained  by  the  lowest 
in  the  scale.  We  can  then  proceed  by  applying  the 
law  to  all  that  have  reached  stages  beyond  this  low- 
est stage,  and  so  on  until  we  have  left  only  the  few 
societies  which  have  reached  the  highest  development 
in  the  social  scale.  That  highest  development  will 
be  found  in  those  societies  which  have  approached 
nearest  to  the  norm,  or,  in  other  words,  those  in  which 
the  division  of  wealth  is  more  nearly  equal. 

It  is  implied  in  the  above  premises  that  the  envi- 
ronments of  some  societies  are  better  suited  to  the 
rapid  flow  of  social  motion  than  those  of  others ;  and 
as  these  present  the  most  favorable  material  for  in- 
vestigation, we  can  deal  with  them  exclusively  in  so 
far  as  the  method  of  distribution  has  been  carried 
forward  in  them  all  to  a  certain  point.  But  as  some 
of  them  are  in  advance  of  others,  it  may  be  neces- 
sary to  consider  that  particular  one  which  is  the  most 


VII  SOCIAL  KINETICS  26$ 

advanced  of  all.  It  may  appear  that  when  we  deal 
with  only  this  one  society  we  are  neglecting  to  weigh 
the  social  facts  presented  by  the  others.  But  this 
will  not  be  the  truth,  because  the  particular  society 
used  for  illustration  is  a  product  of  precisely  the 
same  basic  forces  as  the  others,  but  is  only  more 
highly  developed. 

Thus  if  we  study  England  as  an  example  of  con- 
stitutional groups,  it  will  be  found  that  it  presents 
the  same  facts  as  all  other  constitutional  countries  of 
Europe  up  to  a  certain  point,  beyond  which  England 
has  progressed,  and  below  which  other  groups  have 
remained.  If  we  use  the  United  States  of  America 
as  an  example  of  republican  groups,  we  shall  see  that 
the  difference  between  it  and  England  consists  only 
in  the  enlargement  of  the  constitutional  principle 
which  has  carried  it  beyond  the  state  to  which  Eng- 
land has  been  able  to  rise.  All  reforms  of  govern- 
ment in  England  have  been  toward  the  form  of 
government  used  by  the  United  States.  Thus,  a 
constitutional  history  of  the  United  States  would 
involve  a  constitutional  history  of  Europe,  and  of 
England  especially.  We  have  made  this  digression 
in  order  to  establish  the  conception  that  the  general 
harmony  of  social  facts  can  be  understood  when  we 
understand  the  harmony  of  the  facts  presented  by 
the  most  highly  developed  societies. 

The  law  by  which  can  be  explained  all  the  facts 
of  a  developing  group  must  be  a  law  in  which  is 
stated  the  order  of  action  by  which  a  society  is  car 
ried  toward  or  from  a  state  of  economic  equality  for 
all  —  toward  or  from  an  economic  life  very  like  that 
of  honey-bees.  When  we  regard  apparently  contra- 


266  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

dictory  social  facts  in  this  light,  we  shall  see  that 
there  is  real  harmony  behind  them.  We  touched 
upon  this  matter  when  we  discussed  the  nature  of 
crime.  We  saw  that  the  paradox  of  an  increase  in 
crime  accompanied  by  social  progress  was  explained 
by  a  change  in  the  moral  ideas  of  men,  or  a  shifting 
of  moral  standards  to  higher  and  higher  levels.  If 
this  shifting  of  standards  were  caused  by  the  in- 
creased capacities  of  more  men  for  larger  shares  of 
wealth ;  if,  secondly,  the  increase  of  capacity  were 
caused  by  a  progressively  more  equable  division  of 
wealth ;  and  if,  lastly,  this  increasingly  even  division 
were  caused  by  the  discovery  of  new  relations  to  the 
environment  —  let  us  say  the  discovery  of  money  — 
then  we  could  discern  a  harmony  between  the  con- 
flicting terms  of  the  paradox  which  was  not  perceived 
before. 

Every  paradoxical  character  of  crime  would  dis- 
appear were  we  to  conceive  of  the  phenomenon  of 
crime  as  a  deviation  from  the  right  line  of  progress 
which  terminates  in  a  perfectly  equal  division  of 
wealth ;  a  deviation,  however,  which  is  necessary  in 
the  very  nature  of  the  forces  moving  society  onward 
toward  its  purpose ;  and,  lastly,  a  deviation  which  is 
occasioned,  and  at  the  same  time  modified,  and  con- 
trolled, by  the  shifting  moral  standards,  the  increased 
capacities,  the  convolving  environment,  and  the  dis- 
covery of  new  environmental  relations. 

We  have  already  said  that  all  social  facts  may  be 
reduced  to  the  four  laws  of  social  life  set  out  at  the 
beginning  of  this  chapter.  These  laws  are  the  gen- 
eralizations of  social  action  in  its  four  aspects.  But 
these  are  only  aspects  of  one  and  the  same  process 


vii  SOCIAL  KINETICS  267 

which  can,  of  course,  be  none  other  than  the  action 
of  society  in  moving  toward  its  norm,  in  which  shall 
be  found  united  the  historical  sum  of  all  of  its  motions. 
And  if  this  kinetic  process  is  only  the  equalization  of 
wealth,  then  it  should  follow  that  in  that  process 
of  equalization  should  be  found  the  causes  which 
explain  all  human  facts.  Carrying  our  argument  a 
step  farther :  If  this  last  generalization  be  true, 
then  it  will  follow  that  human  society,  so  far  as 
human  observation  is  competent  to  affirm,  can  have 
no  other  purpose  than  this  very  equalization  toward 
which  all  social  -motions  flow. 

So  long,  therefore,  as  a  society  is  in  process  of 
flowing  toward  its  norm,  we  should  not  expect  to 
find  that  equilibrium  which  the  norm  alone  supplies. 
We  should  expect  to  find  the  society  in  an  increas- 
ingly unstable  state  as  we  recede  from  the  norm,  and 
in  an  increasingly  stable  state  as  we  approach  it.  In 
those  human  societies  which  have  discovered  the  most 
numerous  relations  to.  the  environment,  we  should  find 
the  action  in  the  direction  of  the  norm  most  rapid. 
And  this  rapidity  of  action  should  be  accompanied  by 
healthy  freedom  in  the  increase  of  population.  These 
societies,  owing  to  the  complexity  of  their  environ- 
ments, should  have  larger  areas  of  moral  sensibility, 
and  a  more  equable  division  of  wealth  than  other 
human  societies.  They  should  have  more  numerous 
and  more  efficient  instruments  of  division  of  wealth 
than  societies  more  distant  from  the  norm.  Their 
state,  while  apparently  less  stable  than  other  socie- 
ties, should  be  found  to  be  really  more  stable,  inas- 
much as  that  no  pressure  from  over-population,  or 
menace  from  stronger  contiguous  societies,  threatens 


268  THE  LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

their  integrity.  They  should  tend  to  draw  from  weaker 
and  less  rapidly  advancing  communities  streams  of 
individuals  whose  desires  lead  them  to  environments 
which  better  serve  the  life  purpose.  They  should 
present  social  characters  which  diverge  from  those 
of  other  societies  in  the  direction  in  which  the  en- 
vironment has  been  most  profoundly  altered. 

In  such  societies  we  should  expect  to  find  that  the 
progression  in  equalization  of  wealth  has  most  widely 
enlarged  moral  perceptions  in  the  matter  of  property 
right.  This  enlarged  morality  would  produce  condi- 
tions of  crime  very  divergent  from  those  of  other 
societies  not  so  far  advanced  toward  the  norm.  We 
should  expect  to  find  very  much  larger  increments 
of  capacity  in  larger  numbers  of  individuals  in  such 
societies  than  in  others,  and  hence  a  more  painful 
mental  social  state.  New  increments  of  capacity 
would  tend,  in  such  societies,  to  produce  conduct 
spontaneously  condemned  by  the  ethics  of  other 
societies.  The  efforts  of  almost  all  individuals  would 
be  directed  toward  securing  larger  shares  of  wealth. 
In  such  societies  many  facts  should  coexist,  the 
coexistence  of  which  would  seem  to  be  self-contra- 
dictory. Thus  we  should  find  coexisting  moral  con- 
ceptions which  should  apparently  destroy  one  another. 
We  should  find  men  condemning,  as  highly  wrong, 
acts  by  which  the  wealth  of  individuals  is  enormously 
increased,  and  at  the  same  time  striving  to  enlarge 
their  own  possessions  to  the  highest  possible  limit. 
We  should  expect  to  find  the  desire  for  wealth 
stronger  than  in  other  societies,  and  the  conduct, 
by  which  the  desires  are  satisfied,  more  strikingly 
disregardful  of  the  rights  of  others.  We  should  ex- 


vii  SOCIAL   KINETICS  269 

pect  to  find  the  anomaly  of  an  unusually  keen  and 
general  perception  of  the  rights  of  self,  coupled  with 
a  general  practice  of  commercial  dishonesty  in  com- 
paratively high  degree. 

We  should  find,  also,  that  the  quantity  of  crime 
against  property  should  be  larger  in  these  societies 
than  in  others,  and  that  conduct  approaching,  in  prin- 
ciple, very  closely  to  theft,  should  be  a  common  prac- 
tice. Such  conduct  would  be  more  readily  facilitated 
by  the  complexity  of  the  environment ;  for  the  higher 
forms  of  capital,  in  such  societies,  would  enable 
managing  capitalists  to  distrain  from  their  numerous 
partners  illegal  shares  of  wealth.  In  less  complex 
partnerships  such  conduct  would  not  be  possible. 
We  should  likewise  expect  to  find,  in  these  advanced 
societies,  that  while  such  apparently  lax  moral  con- 
ceptions are  present,  the  wealth  of  the  average  indi- 
vidual is  greater  than  it  is  in  communities  in  which 
such  ideas  are  comparatively  backward. 

We  should  find,  too,  that  ideas  of  inequality,  ac- 
ceptable enough  in  other  communities,  are,  in  these, 
highly  repugnant  to  common  standards  of  right.  In 
them  there  can  be  no  fixed  ideas  of  the  propriety  of 
large  quantities  of  wealth  remaining  in  the  posses- 
sion of  any  particular  class.  There  should  be  no 
class  which,  as  a  class,  is  always  associated  with 
ideas  of  great  wealth.  There  should  be  no  wealthy 
class  other  than  that  produced  by  the  continuous 
efforts  of  individuals  to  secure  larger  shares  of 
wealth.  In  other  words,  there  would  be  no  organic 
inequality  produced  by  the  successful  or  unsuccess- 
ful efforts  of  individuals  to  enrich  themselves,  be- 
cause the  growing  moral  increment  would  condemn 


2/0  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

a  process  which  would  permanently  prevent  the  sat- 
isfaction of  the  growing  desires  for  life. 

All  these  phenomena  will  be  seen  to  be  perfectly 
harmonious  when  the  causes  of  them  are  understood. 
If  such  a  state  exists  —  and  it  will  be  admitted  that  it 
exists  in  the  United  States  of  America  especially  — 
there  must  be  a  cause  for  it.  If  we  can  find  the 
cause,  we  can  understand  the  phenomena.  And  the 
only  cause  to  which  can  be  referred  the  apparently 
contradictory  facts  we  have  noted,  will  be  found  to 
lie  in  the  rapidly  advancing  equalization  of  wealth. 
It  will  not  assist  us  to  assign  specious  or  vaguely 
general  reasons  to  the  facts  before  us.  To  say  that 
the  popular  "  moral  tone  "  is  lower  in  America  than 
elsewhere  will  not  answer  the  purpose,  for  even  were 
this  the  truth,  it  would  only  be  a  restatement  of  the 
matter.  But  it  is  not  the  truth.  The  moral  con- 
sciousness of  America  is  very  much  larger  in 
quantity  and  more  delicately  sensitive  than  that  of 
any  country  in  Europe,  as  we  shall  presently  see. 
If  we  are  to  learn  the  causes  of  the  moral  difference 
between  America  and  Europe,  we  must  find  the 
forces  which  produce  one  state  of  morals  in  the  one 
place  and  another  in  the  other.  We  do  not  hesitate 
to  say  that  of  the  countries  of  Europe  those  which 
more  nearly  approach  America  in  general  economic 
equality  more  nearly  approach  it  in  their  moral  con- 
ceptions ;  and  the  comparison  may  be  carried  farther  by 
the  additional  assertion  that  the  substantial  methods  of 
government  will  be  found  to  be  correspondingly  like. 

Let  us  inquire  whether  the  moral  consciousness  of 
Americans  be  greater  or  less  than  that  of  Europeans. 

In  England  we  find  a  system  of  nobility  which  is 


vii  SOCIAL   KINETICS  2/1 

given,  by  law,  an  inalienable  right  to  a  coordinate 
function  of  the  government.  Mere  accident  of  birth 
confers  upon  an  individual  the  right  to  rule  his  fellow- 
citizens.  Fitness  to  rule  fairly  —  that  is  to  say,  for 
the  general  good  —  is  not  even  theoretically  admitted 
to  be  a  necessary  qualification.  Accident  of  birth  is 
the  essential  qualification. 

Associated  with  this  system  of  inherited  right  to 
rule  we  find  a  system  of  land  tenure  which  has 
enabled  a  comparatively  small  number  of  individuals 
to  continue  to  own  most  of  the  surface  of  the  earth 
constituting  the  realm.  We  find  that  while  men  are 
free  to  practise  any  religion  approved  by  their  choice, 
they  are  required  to  surrender  a  part  of  their  wealth 
to  administer  to  the  religious  comfort  of  others  who 
approve  of  creeds  different  from,  and  even  antagonistic 
to,  their  own.  This  taxation  for  religious  purposes  is 
not  justified  by  any  appeal  to  good  citizenship ;  for  it  is 
admitted  that  a  citizen  who  does  not  subscribe  to  the 
state  religion  may  be  as  useful  as  one  who  does.  The 
taxation  of  all  classes  for  the  benefit  of  one  class,  in  the 
matter  of  religious  practice,  has  not  even  a  plausible  jus- 
tification. It  has  no  justification  other  than  that  offered 
by  the  thief  who  deliberately  appropriates  the  wealth  of 
another  for  the  gratification  of  his  personal  desires. 

In  England  all  classes  are  taxed  for  the  support  of 
a  large  number  of  individuals  who  contribute  nothing 
whatever  to  the  common  good.  Large  revenues  are 
diverted  from  the  public  treasury  to  private  persons, 
for  their  private  uses,  merely  because  these  individuals 
are  born  of  the  royal  stock.  They  render  no  service 
whatever  to  the  community,  either  actual  or  potential, 
in  return  for  the  shares  of  wealth  they  receive  by 


2/2  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

enactment  of  law.  Now  all  these  things  hinder  the 
freedom  of  the  pursuit  of  happiness  by  the  masses, 
and  the  social  mechanisms  of  the  legislature  and  the 
judiciary  are  used  for  this  end.  Another  limitation 
is  placed  upon  the  liberty  of  the  masses  by  the 
restriction  of  the  suffrage  qualification. 

If,  now,  we  consider  these  limitations  together,  we 
shall  find  that  they  are  all  of  a  moral  nature.  If  it  is 
true  that  the  citizen  of  England  believes  that  his 
liberty  is  conserved  by  taxing  himself  for  the  support 
of  a  nobility  and  a  royalty,  for  the  administration  of 
religious  comforts  to  others  of  creeds  antagonistic  to 
his  own,  and  for  the  maintenance  of  a  system  of  law 
by  which  that  system  of  taxation  is  sustained,  then  it 
is  clear  that  he  believes  that  these  things  are  right. 
In  other  words,  the  moral  conceptions  of  the 
majority  of  the  English  people  do  not  condemn  as 
wrong  the  organic  inequality  of  birth  and  wealth 
found  in  the  English  polity. 

But  we  know  that  these  institutions  have  been 
largely  modified  within  a  century  of  English  history, 
and  have  been  very  largely  and  very  radically  modi- 
fied within  five  centuries.  This  change  can  be  traced 
to  no  cause  other  than  corresponding  changes  in 
English  conceptions  of  right  and  wrong,  or  a  shift- 
ing of  moral  standards  to  higher  levels.  The  changes 
unquestionably  have  taken  place.  They  have  been  due 
unquestionably  to  a  growing  moral  consciousness.  All 
of  them  have  been  in  the  direction  of  the  curtailment 
of  the  power  of  royalty  and  nobility.  All  of  them 
have  been  followed  by  larger  liberties  for  the  masses. 
It  would  therefore  appear  that  larger  liberties  await 
on  further  changes  in  the  same  direction,  unless  we 
contend  that  England  has  made  no  social  progress. 


vii  SOCIAL   KINETICS  2/3 

But  in  America  we  find  that  these  institutions  have 
been  abolished  altogether.  And  unless  we  hold  that 
English  standards  of  morals  are  no  higher  now  than 
they  were  in  the  time  of  Henry  VIII.,  we  must  admit 
that  American  standards  are  higher  than  those  of  the 
England  of  to-day.  This  opinion  will  be  reinforced 
when  we  consider  that  in  America  the  division  of 
wealth  is  far  more  nearly  equal  than  it  is  in  England. 
If  England  of  to-day  is  in  advance  of  England  of  the 
time  of  Henry,  and  only  because  its  wealth  is  more 
evenly  divided,  then  it  must  be  true  that  social  prog- 
ress in  America  has  been  carried  farther  than  in 
England. 

Thus  we  observe  that  although  commercial  dis- 
honesty seems  to  be  more  prevalent  in  the  United 
States  than  in  Great  Britain,  it  is  because  conduct 
is  measured  by  different  moral  standards.  The 
Englishman  who  sets  down  the  American  "  con- 
science "  as  having  a  "  low  moral  tone "  because  of 
certain  lax  ideas  in  trade  or  in  politics,  approves  a 
system  of  taxation  which,  to  the  American,  is  more 
repugnant  than  highway  robbery.  The  familiar  illus- 
trations of  the  beam  and  the  mote,  the  gnat  and  the 
camel,  suggest  themselves  here  with  no  inconsiderable 
force.  The  robber  lord  of  the  mediaeval  feud  is  no 
more  repugnant  to  the  modern  British  citizen  than 
is  the  modern  British  hereditary  lord,  with  his  right 
of  rule,  to  the  American  citizen  of  to-day. 

In  these  facts,  we  apprehend,  can  be  found  an 
explanation  of  the  paradox  of  laxity  in  political 
and  commercial  ethics  coupled,  in  America,  with 
wider  freedom  for  the  pursuit  of  basic  pleasures. 
What  seems  to  be  a  forcible  objection  to  the  theory 


2/4  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

offers  itself  almost  immediately.  The  objection  may 
be  stated  in  this  way :  In  England  the  total  wealth 
of  the  community  is  attached  to  a  very  few  individuals 
as  compared  with  the  wealth  of  America.  But  the 
punishment  for  crime  against  property  is  much  more 
severe  in  England  than  in  America. 

If,  as  we  have  argued,  the  moral  standard  of 
Americans  be  really  higher  than  that  of  Britons, 
regard  for  property  rights  should  be  more  rigidly  en- 
forced in  America  than  in  Britain.  But  we  find  that 
such  is  not  the  fact.  Crimes  against  property,  which 
would  be  severely  punished  in  England,  are  readily 
condoned  in  America,  and  it  would  appear  from  this 
fact  that  the  property  right  is  held  to  be  more  sacred 
in  the  one  group  than  in  the  other.  This  would 
seem  to  be  a  palpable  contradiction  of  the  principle 
we  have  announced  that  sanctity  of  property  is 
measured  by  the  degree  of  ethical  evolution.  We 
shall  find,  however,  that  the  contradiction  is  only 
apparent,  and  that  property  is  far  more  sacredly  re- 
garded in  the  republic  than  in  the  kingdom.  And 
we  shall  find,  moreover,  that,  paradoxically  too,  the 
apparent  laxity  is  really  due  to  this  very  distinct 
advance  in  ethical  concept. 

In  England,  as  elsewhere,  a  crime  against  property 
is  heinous  as  it  approaches  the  sovereignty.  Theft 
from  the  government  is  never  condoned  either  in  Great 
Britain  or  in  the  United  States.  But  theft  from  an  in- 
dividual is  punished  in  England  with  a  severity  seldom 
observed  in  America.  This  may  be  more  clearly  under- 
stood when  we  remember  that  the  pursuit  of  wealth,  in 
its  widest  possible  freedom,  is  an  idea  highly  accept- 
able to  American  ideas  of  right.  Liberty  to  increase 


Vii  SOCIAL   KINETICS 

his  possessions  is  the  paramount  liberty  in  the  esti- 
mation of  the  citizen.  He  would,  therefore,  be  dis- 
posed to  restrict,  as  little  as  possible,  like  liberty  in 
others.  This  idea  would  take  its  most  extreme  form 
in  the  unqualified  approval  of  a  man  appropriating 
the  possessions  of  another  in  order  to  sustain  his  life. 
That  man  who  would  show  in  an  American  court  of 
justice  that  he  had  stolen  in  order  to  obtain  food  for 
his  family,  would  never  be  found  guilty  by  a  jury  of 
American  citizens.  On  the  contrary,  his  predaceous 
act  would  not  only  be  condoned,  but  he  would  be 
promptly  relieved  of  his  distress  by  a  sympathetic 
public.  All  idea  of  the  sanctity  of  property  is  sub- 
ordinate in  America  to  the  idea  of  the  sanctity  of  life. 
In  the  moral  standards  of  Americans  the  value  of  the 
life  of  the  citizen  is  higher  than  it  is  in  any  com- 
munity in  which  there  is  a  less  equal  division  of 
wealth  than  in  America. 

As  we  rise  from  the  extreme  of  the  conception 
in  which  outright  theft  is  not  only  condoned  but 
approved,  we  should  find  that  acts  approaching  theft 
are  justified  by  the  common  moral  standard  in  the 
degree  in  which  they  are  prompted  by  the  primary 
necessity  by  which  actual  theft  is  itself  justified.  In 
a  community  which  regards  liberty  for  the  pursuit 
of  wealth  as  the  highest  good,  we  should  look  for 
ideas  which  approve  successful  pursuit,  even  though 
success  be  encompassed  by  methods  which  are  not 
always  ideally  just.  The  citizen  does  not  place  a 
limit  upon  the  success  of  others  so  long  as  safe 
avenues  to  similar  success  are  left  open  for  himself. 
As  he  spontaneously  approves  an  act  by  which  a 
fellow-citizen  saves  his  family  from  starvation,  even 


2/6  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

though  that  act  is  outright  theft,  so  does  he  tend  to 
approve  an  act  which  enlarges  the  possessions  of 
a  fellow-citizen,  so  long  as  that  act  does  not  limit  the 
liberties  of  all  in  achieving  a  like  result. 

This  basic  desire  for  liberty  of  pursuit  would  tend 
to  produce  a  common  sense  of  right  whereby  the 
acquisition  of  wealth  would  not  be  condemned  so 
long  as  it  did  not  press  too  closely  upon  the  life 
purpose  of  the  majority.  This  would  result  in  the 
apparently  lax  ideas  of  property  found  in  America. 
But  that  laxity,  it  is  manifest,  is  due  only  to  the 
egoistic  ideas  of  the  individual  concerning  his  oivn 
right  to  acquire  as  much  wealth  as  it  is  possible  for 
him  to  acquire  without  meriting  public  opprobrium. 
The  American  is  quick  to  apply  the  argumentum  ad 
hominem  in  the  matter  of  gain ;  and  this  is  the  fact 
because  the  average  American  is  far  wealthier  than 
the  average  citizen  of  other  countries,  and  hence  has 
a  larger  capacity  for  the  enjoyment  which  wealth 
makes  possible. 

But  as  soon  as  the  process  of  acquisition  begins  to 
act  in  a  manner  which  curtails  the  potential  wealth  of 
the  many,  while  it  adds  constantly  to  the  actual  wealth 
of  the  few,  the  moral  concepts  of  the  many  begin  to 
change.  As  long  as  a  comparatively  few  individuals 
can  accumulate  vast  fortunes  without  interfering  with 
the  liberty  of  others  doing  the  same  thing,  vast  accu- 
mulations of  private  wealth  are  approved.  But  when 
such  accumulations  are  associated  with  ideas  of  a 
restriction  of  like  liberty  for  others,  they  are  con- 
demned. 

Here  we  are  met  with  another  difference  between 
the  moral  standards  of  Americans  and  Europeans. 


vii  SOCIAL  KINETICS  277 

In  America,  it  matters  not  how  the  vast  fortunes  of 
individuals  have  been  accumulated;  whether  it  has 
been  by  legal  or  illegal  means ;  whether  it  has  been 
passively  by  the  increase  of  population,  or  actively, 
by  the  foresight  and  superior  abilities  of  the  capi- 
talists ;  whether,  in  accumulating  them,  the  capitalist 
has  aided  industry  by  the  increase  of  his  trade,  or  has 
injured  industry  by  the  reduction  of  wages,  or  by  a 
limitation  of  his  product  with  a  corresponding  rise  of 
prices.  These  factors  have  little  bearing  on  the  moral 
judgment  of  the  people.  Whenever  accumulation  of 
wealth  in  private  hands  is  conceived  to  restrict  the 
liberties  of  others  in  acquiring  wealth  of  a  like  kind, 
the  accumulation  is  condemned  as  wrong.  Popular 
opinion  is  expressed  in  the  form  of  statutes,  which 
declare  to  be  illegal  and  criminal  the  methods  of 
trade  which  had  been  once  perfectly  legal  and  which 
had  been  once  considered  perfectly  just. 

Thus  we  behold  another  paradox  in  American 
morals.  By  the  current  code  apparently  vicious 
methods  of  acquiring  wealth  are  condoned  and  ap- 
proved ;  whereas  apparently  just  methods  are  con- 
demned and  sought  to  be  punished.  But  this  paradox 
will  be  understood,  too,  when  we  remember  that  the 
former  methods  are  not  conceived  to  limit  the  com- 
mon liberty,  while  the  latter  methods  are  conceived 
to  do  that  very  thing.  And  these  apparently  contra- 
dictory conceptions  are  explained  by  the  fact  that 
the  division  of  wealth,  in  America,  has  been  carried 
progressively  along  lines  which  converge  toward  a 
perfectly  even  division  of  the  total  wealth  among  all 
the  individuals  of  the  group. 

To  the  average  European  these  various  moral  con- 


2/8  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAfr. 

cepts  of  Americans  naturally  seem  to  be  the  quin- 
tessence of  discord.  To  him  it  appears  inconceivable 
that  a  people  should  approve  of  methods  which,  in 
his  view,  closely  border  upon  fraud,  and  yet  condemn 
as  iniquitous  methods  which  appear,  in  his  view,  to 
be  perfectly  just.  But  when  he  remembers  the  differ- 
ence in  the  size  of  the  capacity  of  the  mass  of  the 
American  people  and  that  of  his  own  for  the  enjoy- 
ment of  wealth,  these  conflicting  moral  opinions  will 
not  be  without  their  causes. 

He  may  have  his  own  opinion  as  to  the  comparative 
desirability  of  the  two  moral  standards.  He  may 
think  it  is  perfectly  right  that  an  hereditary  lord 
should  have  the  power  of  governing  because  of  the 
accident  of  birth.  He  may  think  it  is  just  that  the 
vast  mass  of  the  population  should  be  tenants  while 
a  few  own  the  land.  He  may  be  convinced  that  his 
liberties  are  conserved  by  taxing  all  the  people  for 
the  religious  comfort  of  a  class.  He  may  conceive 
that  it  is  useful  and  beneficial  to  the  nation  to  distrain 
public  funds  for  the  support  of  an  idle  royalty.  He 
may  think  that  it  is  just  that  a  few  individuals  should 
have  the  right  to  the  monopolist  control  of  an  entire 
branch  of  industry  so  long  as  that  control  is  secured 
by  the  merging  of  many  interests  into  one.  He  may 
believe  that  the  right  of  self-preservation  should  be 
limited  by  property  right,  in  at  least  some  degree. 
And  he  may  thoroughly  condemn  a  national  standard 
of  morals  to  which  all  these  views  are  highly  repug- 
nant. But  he  will  be  compelled  to  admit  that  a  very 
prosperous,  very  powerful,  very  populous,  very  intelli- 
gent, and  highly  sympathetic  and  generous  people 
are  disposed  radically  to  disagree  with  him  in 


vil  SOCIAL   KINETICS  279 

these  somewhat  essential  conceptions  of  right  and 
wrong. 

He  will  not  deny  that  American  workmen  are  paid 
larger  wages  than  British  workmen;  that  the  internal 
wealth  of  the  United  States  is  more  evenly  divided 
than  that  of  the  United  Kingdom  ;  that  there  is  no 
emigration  from  America  and  a  large  emigration  from 
England  ;  that  the  United  States  is  more  democratic 
than  democratic  England  itself,  from  which  it  sprang ; 
that  American  economy  is  rapidly  replacing  British 
industry  in  the  world's  trade ;  and  that  America,  in 
spite  of  its  heterogeneous  immigration,  rapidly  ab- 
sorbs the  foreign  elements  which  pour  into  it  in  a 
steady  stream,  and  rapidly  transforms  them  into  the 
substance  of  its  institutions,  ethical,  political,  and 
economic.  He  will  not  deny  efficiency  to  American 
methods  of  education  and  taxation.  If  he  finds  that 
legislatures  are  corrupt,  he  will  not  find  hereditary 
legislators  who  have  everything  to  give  to  and  noth- 
ing to  ask  from  the  people.  And  if  the  "  moral  tone  " 
of  the  American  people  seems  to  him  to  be  low,  he 
must  remember  that  this  "  moral  tone  "  has  been  pro- 
duced by  the  very  benefits  of  a  system  which  is  the 
most  desired  object  of  all  moralists  who  are  not 
naturally  pervert  or  scientifically  antiquated. 

If  we  again  apply  the  historical  method  to  the  ques- 
tion, we  will  find  that  the  only  rational  judgment  to 
be  rendered  will  pronounce  American  ethics  to  be 
higher  than  European.  For  it  must  be  admitted  that 
British  moral  ideas  concerning  property  are  more 
beneficent  to-day  than  they  were  five  centuries  ago. 
The  British  laborer  of  the  present  time  has  property 
rights  which  were  foreign  to  his  ancestors.  The 


280  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

present  monarch  of  England  has  not  the  power  of  a 
Henry  to  debase  the  currency  or  to  confiscate  the 
property  of  a  class  of  citizens  for  his  private  uses. 
Such  funds  as  are  distrained  for  his  use  are  freely 
voted  to  him,  not,  be  it  observed,  by  the  hereditary 
rulers,  but  by  the  elected  rulers.  The  public  moral 
standard  of  England  does  not  deem  it  right  that  the 
treasury  of  the  realm  shall  be  in  the  hands  of  the 
lords,  but  does  deem  it  right  that  the  economic  func- 
tion of  the  government  shall  be  in  the  hands  of  the 
people.  The  income  of  the  monarch  and  family  has 
been  progressively  shortened  by  the  representatives 
of  the  electors. 

The  highest  court  of  justice  in  England  has  decided 
that  laborers  shall  have  the  right  to  unite  for  the  pur- 
pose of  compelling  their  employers  to  pay  higher 
wages.  The  theory  of  the  power  of  the  commons 
has  passed  into  practice,  and  the  practice  of  the 
power  of  the  monarch  (and  his  dependent  nobility) 
has  passed  into  theory,  or  very  considerably  so- 
These  changes  have  been  accompanied  by  a  progres- 
sively more  even  division  of  wealth  and  have  been 
caused  by  that  progression.  Increasing  use  of  wealth 
has  given  larger  capacities  to  increasing  numbers  of 
individuals.  Ethical  ideas  have  undergone  a  corre- 
sponding increase.  What  was  right  for  the  smaller 
capacity  of  yesterday  is  wrong  for  the  larger  capacity 
of  to-day.  If  it  is  right  to  force  the  monarch  to  yield 
larger  shares  of  his  wealth  to  the  people  by  withdraw- 
ing from  him  the  power  of  fixing  his  own  income,  it 
has  been  found  no  less  right  for  the  laborer  to  force 
his  employer,  by  refusal  of  his  services  in  united 
action  taken  for  that  special  purpose,  to  yield  larger 
shares  of  production  to  the  producer. 


vn  SOCIAL  KINETICS  28 1 

If  England  is  more  moral  to-day  than  it  was  three 
hundred  years  ago,  it  is  only  because  the  English  peo- 
ple, in  the  mass,  are  wealthier  now  than  then.  If  con- 
fiscation from  the  people  by  the  crown  (through  grants 
and  patents)  was  right  then,  confiscation  from  the 
crown  by  the  people  (through  limitation  of  the  royal 
income)  is  right  now.  It  is  not  the  ideas  of  the  king 
and  the  nobility  which  determine  what  is  moral  with 
regard  to  property.  The  determinator  is  found  in 
the  ideas  of  the  people.  The  lord  who  would  advo- 
cate the  use  of  the  army  to  restore  the  power  he  pos- 
sessed eight  hundred  years  ago  would  be  condemned 
as  vicious  by  public  opinion.  He  might  very  well  pos- 
sess the  capacity  for  wealth-owning  possessed  by  his 
ancestor ;  but  the  action  of  that  capacity  is  limited  by 
the  moral  ideas  of  the  majority.  He  may  deem  the 
majority  dishonest,  and  be  profoundly  convinced  that 
his  opinion  is  founded  on  pure  justice ;  but  the  con- 
ceptions of  the  majority  are  profoundly  influenced  in 
an  opposite  direction  by  the  wealth  in  its  hands,  and 
by  the  desires  which  the  possession  of  that  wealth 
engenders. 

We  observe  that  in  England  the  larger  economic 
liberty  of  the  masses  has  progressively  changed  ideas 
concerning  the  sanctity  of  property.  We  observe  that 
crimes  against  property  are  not  punished  now  as  rigor- 
ously or  as  severely  as  they  were  a  few  generations 
ago,  when  the  masses  were  less  wealthy.  We  note 
that  moral  notions  affecting  property  are  very  lax  in 
the  England  of  to-day  as  compared  with  the  England 
of  three  centuries,  two  centuries,  or  one  century  since. 
We  see  that  the  increase  in  the  complexity  of  capital 
and  the  growth  of  its  tertiary  form  has  made  com- 


282  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

mercial  fraud  more  easy.  We  see  that  the  acquisi- 
tion of  wealth,  by  methods  not  altogether  ideally  just, 
is  approved  in  England,  as  in  America,  although  not 
so  spontaneously  or  so  generally,  and  we  see  the 
same  repugnance  to  monopoly  as  that  in  America, 
although  in  less  degree. 

It  would  therefore  appear  that  the  moral  paradoxes 
of  America  are  found  in  England,  too,  only  in  smaller 
quantity.  Or,  to  place  the  proposition  in  its  histori- 
cal sequence,  the  same  moral  paradoxes  found  in 
England  are  found  in  America,  only  there  they  are 
found  in  larger  quantity.  And  if  England  is  more 
moral  now,  because  of  these  facts,  than  it  formerly 
was,  America  is  more  moral  than  is  England  of  the 
present  time  because  of  the  presence  of  facts  of  a  like 
kind  in  higher  degree. 

We  are  thus  brought  to  the  conclusion  that  social 
facts,  which  seem  to  be  out  of  harmony  with  concep- 
tions of  social  progress,  fall  into  harmony  with  these 
conceptions  when  their  general  relations  are  under- 
stood, and  when  these  relations  are  reduced  to  a  com- 
mon fundamental  cause.  If  that  cause  be  not  found 
in  the  rearrangement  of  the  environment  around  in- 
creasingly large  numbers  of  individuals ;  in  the  moral 
conceptions  arising  from  that  rearrangement ;  and  in 
the  flow  of  social  motion  toward  the  levelling  of  indi- 
vidual wealth  to  equal  quantities  for  each,  then  we 
should  be  forced  to  abandon  the  theory  we  have  here 
outlined. 

The  conclusions  at  which  we  have  arrived,  concern- 
ing moral  ideas  regarding  property,  imply  similar 
conclusions  concerning  moral  ideas  regarding  life. 
We  should  expect  to  find  comparative  laxity  in  the 


vn  SOCIAL  KINETICS  283 

value  attached  to  life,  and  to  sanctity  of  person,  in 
communities  more  highly  developed  ethically  than 
other  communities.  The  average  citizen,  possessing 
comparatively  large  quantities  of  wealth  and  corre- 
sponding power,  would  be  disposed  forcibly  to  resent 
acts  which,  to  his  view,  would  seem  to  trench  upon 
his  privileges.  This  idea  would  take  its  extreme  form 
in  lawless  acts  against  the  life  of  others,  and  against 
the  persons  of  others.  We  should  expect  to  find  a 
turbulence  of  conduct  in  this  respect  apparently  out 
of  all  proportion  to  the  highly  moral  sense  of  the 
community.  But  this  very  turbulence  would  be  really 
only  an  evidence  of  the  presence  of  a  more  healthy 
and  independent  spirit  among  the  prosperous  masses. 
The  Russian  peasant,  who  thinks  himself  honored  by 
a  blow  from  the  hand  of  a  great  lord  or  military  offi- 
cer, furnishes  an  example  of  the  opposite  extreme  of 
morality. 

The  moral  codes  of  mining  camps  are  proverbially 
lax  in  their  conceptions  of  the  sanctity  of  life.  There 
is  a  proverb  in  the  far  West  of  America  to  the  effect 
that  consideration  for  the  feelings  of  others  is  most  del- 
icate in  those  parts  where  revolvers  are  worn  in  plain 
view.  But  in  mining  camps  the  potential  economic 
equality  of  men  is  greater  than  in  any  other  circum- 
stances of  industry.  In  such  localities  men,  through 
force  of  self-interest,  are  compelled  to  have  the 
highest  regard  for  the  rights  of  others.  Previously 
formed  normal  conceptions  give  way,  in  such  circum- 
stances, to  ideas  of  justice  which  would  be  anomalous 
in  communities  in  which  the  opportunities  for  wealth- 
getting  are  not  so  general.  Thus  this  very  lawless- 
ness, which  seems  to  distinguish  the  conduct  of  men 


284  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

in  such  localities,  is  really  due  to  a  conception  of  jus- 
tice which  repels  the  thought  of  any  interference 
with  the  perfect  freedom  of  the  individual  to  pursue 
the  acquisition  of  wealth  in  his  own  way,  so  long  as 
his  conduct  does  not  limit  like  freedom  of  others. 
All  the  men  in  a  mining  camp  have  nearly  equal 
psychic  capacity  for  the  possession  of  at  least  a  cer- 
tain sum  of  wealth ;  otherwise  they  would  remain 
away.  And  by  this  segregation  of  capacities,  the 
ideas  of  miners  are  easily  fusible  into  a  common  sense 
of  right,  which,  when  violated,  expresses  itself  in  acts 
of  force  against  life  and  person. 

If  we  pass  from  the  extreme  examples  of  the  Rus- 
sian peasant  and  the  American  or  Australian  or 
African  mining  camp  to  societies  nearer  to  the  cen- 
tres of  utilization,  we  shall  find  this  apparent  dis- 
regard for  life  adjusting  itself  to  the  freedom  of  the 
community  in  the  pursuit  of  possessions.  So  it  is 
that  we  find  personal  encounters  more  frequent  in 
England  than  in  Russia,  and  more  frequent  in  the 
United  States  than  in  England.  Whereas  the  practice 
of  "lynching"  in  America,  so  far  from  being  an 
evidence  of  a  less  regard  for  the  sanctity  of  life  than 
is  found  in  England,  is  really  an  evidence  of  a  greater 
regard  for  life.  But  it  will  be  observed,  in  this  con- 
nection, that  the  crimes  for  which  men  are  most 
frequently  killed  by  mobs  are  of  a  nature  that  is 
really  more  repugnant  to  the  prosperous  citizen  than 
any  act  against  the  sanctity  of  person  encompassed 
for  the  purpose  of  gain.  And  it  will  be  observed, 
furthermore,  that  such  crimes  are  committed,  not  by 
the  prosperous  citizen  of  European  origin,  but  by  the 
African  in  whom  centuries  of  contact  with  the 


vn  SOCIAL  KINETICS  285 

Caucasian  races  of  America  has  not  been  followed  by 
moral  progress  either  actual  or  potential. 

To  understand  the  force  of  the  argument  we  have 
tried  to  make,  the  definition  of  social  progress  must 
be  kept  continually  in  view.  That  definition  discloses 
progress  to  lie  in  ever  increasing  freedom  for  the 
many  to  acquire  larger  shares  of  wealth,  and  in  the 
actual  acquisition  of  wealth  in  this  way.  New  wealth 
adds  to  the  capacity  of  the  individual  for  the  enjoy- 
ment of  still  larger  shares  of  wealth.  Increased 
capacity  progressively  changes  the  moral  concepts  of 
the  individual,  so  as  to  cause  the  number  of  acts  he 
conceives  to  interfere  with  his  liberty  continually  to 
increase  in  number.  Old  ideas  of  right  and  wrong 
are  modified  by  the  fluxion,  alter  their  characters, 
and  disappear  altogether  in  the  developing  moral 
codes  which  arise  with  the  developing  environment 
and  its  progressive  rearrangement.  The  change  may 
be  rapid  or  slow  as  the  number  of  new  environmental 
relations  perceived  are  many  or  few.  But  wherever 
there  is  found  an  arrangement  of  wealth  most  nearly 
approaching  equality  for  all,  there,  too,  will  be  found 
the  widest  liberty  for  acquisition,  and  the  most  deli- 
cately poised  conceptions  of  right  and  wrong,  out  of 
which  will  emerge,  as  we  have  seen,  conduct  which  is 
morally  paradoxical. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

SOCIAL    KINETICS    CONTINUED 

WE  may  now  resume  our  inquiry  into  the  methods 
by  which  the  economic  progress  of  society  is  carried 
forward.  In  primitive  societies  certain  parts  of  the 
environment  would  have  to  be  set  aside  for  the  free 
action  of  the  economic  mechanism.  In  very  low 
orders  of  societies  those  parts  of  the  surroundings, 
which  have  been  called  "  public  wealth  "  by  econo- 
mists, would  be  limited,  more  or  less,  to  property 
useful  to  the  military  functions  of  the  group.  But 
with  the  discovery  of  metallic  money,  and  its  devel- 
opment into  comparatively  complex  capital,  the  quan- 
tity of  the  public  wealth  would  necessarily  be  enlarged, 
and  its  category  extended  to  things  which  had  been 
previously  in  the  category  of  private  wealth. 

For  example,  metallic  money  would  enable  govern- 
ment to  interfere  with  industry  in  many  ways  not 
before  subject  to  that  interference.  While  men  used 
animals  for  money,  government  could  not  exercise 
financial  control  except  in  a  cumbersome  way.  But 
it  is  manifest  that  govermental  power  would  be  ex- 
tended vastly  by  the  use  of  an  exchange  medium  so 
compact,  portable,  and  readily  convertible  as  the 
precious  metals.  Government  would,  therefore,  be 
disposed  to  assume  control  of  money  in  some  of  its 

286 


CHAP,  vin  SOCIAL   KINETICS  CONTINUED  287 

functions  if  not  in  all.  Thus  we  would  find  that 
greater  or  less  parts  of  this  most  highly  desirable 
form  of  capital  would  pass  from  the  category  of  pri- 
vate wealth  into  that  of  public  wealth.  Inasmuch  as 
any  particular  portion  of  the  entire  quantity  of  money 
might,  at  any  time,  come  into  the  possession  of  gov- 
ernment, it  would  be  to  the  interest  of  government 
to  enforce  as  a  standard-money  that  which  was  found 
to  be  most  acceptable  to  the  people.  By  use  of  such 
money  government  would  extend  public  wealth  to 
instruments  for  the  enforcement  of  laws  found  need- 
ful for  the  internal  integrity  of  the  group,  economic 
and  political. 

This  public  control  of  the  most  essentially  desirable 
form  of  capital  would  be  found  to  facilitate  the  means 
whereby  the  saver  of  money  would  be  protected  by 
the  interests  of  all  —  rulers  and  subjects  alike.  But 
it  is  evident  that  in  communities  in  which  the  quan- 
tity of  money  would  be  small,  only  a  comparatively 
small  number  of  individuals  could  acquire  sufficient 
wealth  to  live  in  circumstances  of  luxury.  Prosperous 
groups  would  therefore  tend  to  satisfy  the  growing 
capacity  of  the  many  by  an  increase  of  public  wealth, 
of  an  aesthetic  or  luxurious  kind,  which  would  be  com- 
mon property  for  the  use  of  all.  Rich  capitalists 
would  gratify  their  desires  by  the  use  of  private 
environments,  or  homes,  while  poorer,  or  potential 
capitalists  would  find  their  gratifications  in  public 
places  and  buildings  of  beauty,  or  of  extraordinary 
utility  for  amusement.  Such  public  wealth  would  be 
absent  from  less  prosperous  or  very  much  more  pros- 
perous groups,  because  in  the  first  kind  there  would 
be  no  capacity  for  its  enjoyment,  owing  to  lack  of 


288  THE  LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

money  (and  hence  of  freely  distributed  private  wealth); 
and  in  the  second  kind  the  individual  would  have  less 
desire  for  public  wealth  because  of  his  greater  pos- 
sessions in  private  wealth. 

In  more  prosperous  groups  the  entertainment  of 
the  public  would  be  left  in  the  hands  of  private  capi- 
talists because  of  the  ability  of  such  to  supply  this 
want  by  the  use  of  the  money  acquired  by  them  from 
the  common  stock.  And  it  is  evident  that  these  places 
of  entertainment,  while  more  numerous,  would  not  be 
so  lavish  as  those  of  a  public  character.  In  more  pros- 
perous communities,  too,  the  public  capacity  for  the 
appreciation  of  public  art,  of  open  places  for  recrea- 
tion, and  of  public  amusement  of  any  kind,  would  be 
less  than  in  a  less  prosperous  community  because 
of  the  greater  power  of  the  individual  to  gratify  his 
desires  by  private  means. 

By  this  principle  we  can  understand  the  very 
marked  excellence  in  the  beauty  and  quantity  of  the 
public  monuments,  buildings,  and  open  places  of 
ancient  Greece  or  Rome,  as  compared  with  those  of 
the  modern  industrial  nations  of  Europe  and  its  colo- 
nies. The  publicly  owned  art  and  architecture  of 
Athens  and  Rome  were  vast,  in  proportion  to  popula- 
tion, as  compared  with  those  of  modern  Europe.  But 
the  mass  of  privately  owned  aesthetic  wealth  of  Euro- 
pean cities  is  incomparably  greater  than  that  of  these 
ancient  nations. 

To  bring  both  terms  of  the  illustration  down  to  the 
present  time,  the  quantity  of  aesthetic  things  in  pos- 
session of  private  individuals  in  America  is  much 
larger  than  in  Europe.  There  are  fewer  gorgeous 
cathedrals  and  public  art  galleries  in  America  than  in 


viii  SOCIAL   KINETICS  CONTINUED  289 

Europe,  but  there  are  many  more  churches  of  pleas- 
ing design,  owned  by  the  congregations,  and  many 
more  comparatively  beautiful  homes.  Statistics  of 
the  production  and  consumption  of  musical  instru- 
ments and  sheet  music  in  America  will  show  why  it 
is  that  audiences  in  America  are  not  as  musically 
critical  as  those  of  Europe,  while,  at  the  same  time, 
the  total  quantity  of  enjoyment  of  the  musical  art  is 
very  much  greater.  So  long  as  the  individual  finds 
that  he  can  gratify  his  desires  by  the  use  of  his  own 
private  wealth,  he  will  not  demand  that  they  be  grati- 
fied by  public  wealth. 

It  would  be  natural  to  expect  that  public  esteem  for 
individuals  would  be  measured  by  the  commercial 
ideas  of  the  more  prosperous  community.  Thus  in 
less  prosperous  groups  the  artist  or  the  philosopher 
would  be  more  highly  honored  because  of  his  ability 
to  satisfy  public  taste,  and  great  artists  would  be  more 
numerous  than  in  communities  in  which  greater  quan- 
tities of  money  disposed  men  to  be  capitalists.  The 
statesman  who  would  utilize  public  money  in  the  crea- 
tion of  public  wealth  would  be  appraised,  and  the 
soldier,  who  by  conquest  would  increase  the  public 
revenue,  would  be  held  in  still  higher  esteem.  In 
richer  communities  that  statesman  would  be  most 
highly  honored  who  encompassed  the  enactment  of 
laws  by  which  industrial  progress  was  made  more 
facile.  We  should  expect  to  find,  in  communities  of 
this  kind,  much  interference  of  government  with  in- 
dustrial processes,  not  for  the  purpose  of  enriching 
the  ruling  classes,  but  for  the  purpose  of  enriching 
the  people.  This  principle  would  lead  to  the  produc- 
tion of  great  statesmen  instead  of  great  artists,  and 


THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

would  account  for  those  industrial  experiments  of 
government  which  form  no  inconsiderable  part  of  the 
political  history  of  Europe  and  its  colonies. 

Intellectual  progress  would  keep  pace  with  aesthetic 
and  moral  progress.  But  intellectual  progress  does 
not  mean  the  development  of  a  few  high  intellects, 
while  the  intellectual  state  of  the  masses  remains  low. 
Greek  philosophy  was  more  generally  understood  and 
appreciated  in  Rome  than  upon  its  own  soil.  Thou- 
sands of  Roman  youths  went  to  Athens  to  study 
philosophy,  although  Rome  itself  produced  few  great 
thinkers.  This  was  because  wealth  was  more  freely 
distributed  among  the  republican  Romans  and  its 
quantity  correspondingly  greater.  But  if  Rome  pro- 
duced no  great  philosophers,  she  produced  statesmen, 
soldiers,  and  civil  engineers,  vastly  superior  to  those 
of  Greece.  Vitruvius  may  have  been  inferior  to 
Phidias  as  an  aesthetic  architect,  but  his  written  works 
deal  largely  with  domestic  architecture.  They  dis- 
close the  fact  that  private  wealth  was  more  generally 
distributed  in  Rome  than  in  Athens,  even  though  the 
public  art  of  Athens  was  very  much  superior  to  that 
of  its  more  wealthy  neighbor.  And  it  will  be  observed 
that  such  public  architecture  as  was  found  in  Rome 
was  more  useful  than,  if  not  so  beautiful  as,  that  of 
the  Greeks. 

The  government  of  Rome  built  better  roads,  better 
ships,  and  better  implements  of  war  than  did  the 
Greeks ;  while  the  water  and  sewer  systems  of  the 
Romans  were  unknown  to  the  Athenians.  The  same 
superiority  in  all  the  economic  arts  is  observed  in 
Rome.  In  Roman  houses  of  even  moderately  pros- 
perous citizens  there  was  always  provision  for  a 


viii  SOCIAL  KINETICS  CONTINUED  2QI 

library,  showing  that  the  circulation  of  literature  was 
general  in  Rome,  although  Roman  poets  and  philoso- 
phers were  distinctly  inferior  to  those  of  Greece.  The 
homes  of  many  rich  Roman  nobles  were  more  use- 
fully beautiful  than  the  buildings  of  the  Acropolis. 

When  we  draw  similar  comparisons  between  mod- 
ern communities,  we  will  find  the  same  principle  illus- 
trated. In  America  the  average  wealth  of  the  citizen 
gives  him  a  high  capacity  for  wealth-using  as  com- 
pared with  that  of  the  average  European  citizen. 
There  is  hence  a  larger  display  of  private  wealth  and 
a  smaller  display  of  public  wealth.  America  does  not 
develop  a  few  great  aesthetic  architects,  but  numerous 
architects  for  the  gratification  of  private  desires. 
American  youths  flock  to  Europe  for  the  study  of 
science,  although  the  United  States  has  developed 
few  great  scientific  intellects.  The  circulation  of  lit- 
erature is  very  much  more  general  in  the  United 
States  than  in  Europe.  American  invention  is  pro- 
verbially in  advance  of  that  of  other  countries.  These 
facts  may  be  explained  by  the  greater  freedom  in 
America  for  the  use  of  capital  by  comparatively  large 
numbers  of  individuals,  and  for  the  consequent  more 
general  state  of  private  wealth. 

As  we  have  already  said,  the  assumption  of  the 
control  of  money  by  government  would  involve  con- 
trol of  other  things  used  by  government  for  military 
purposes.  But  government  occupation  would  be 
found,  as  in  the  case  of  money,  to  facilitate  private 
capitalism,  and  thus  the  function  of  control  exer- 
cised by  the  government  would  pass  from  a  military 
character  into  an  industrial  character.  In  this  way 
government  monopoly,  and  government  control  of  in- 


292  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

dustry,  would  be  produced  and  developed  so  long  as 
it  would  be  found  to  facilitate  economic  freedom  for 
the  many.  But  as  soon  as  experience  taught  that 
such  monopoly  or  such  control  hindered  economic 
freedom,  it  would  tend  to  disappear.  Thus  we  should 
look  for  permanent  government  control  of  those  eco- 
nomic functions  which  long  and  repeated  experience 
had  taught  were  conducive  to  the  freedom  of  the 
most  people  in  the  acquisition  of  private  wealth. 

Government  would  therefore  control,  primarily, 
the  land,  because  land  is  the  basic  part  of  capital. 
Protection  in  his  private  rights  would  be  highly 
desirable  for  the  capitalist,  and  public  protection 
would  be  more  efficient  than  private  protection. 
Channels  of  communication  and  transportation  would 
also  fall  under  the  control  or  ownership  of  govern- 
ment, and  the  private  capitalist  would  find  that  his 
freedom  would  be  best  served  by  common  property 
in  land  used  for  roads.  When  private  ownership  of 
land  would  be  found  greatly  to  hinder  the  freedom 
of  the  military  or  economic  mechanism,  that  part  of 
private  wealth  in  land  which  obstructed  economic 
freedom  would  pass  over  into  the  category  of  public 
wealth,  there  to  remain.  From  these  forces  would 
arise  the  right  of  eminent  domain  and  its  usufruct. 
Confiscation  of  basic  capital  would  thus  be  approved 
by  the  moral  concepts  of  the  majority  when  it  would 
be  found  that  this  action  would  be  beneficial  to  the 
many,  although  conceived  by  the  few  to  be  injurious. 
In  the  same  way  confiscation  of  secondary  capital, 
or  money,  would  be  justified  by  moral  concepts  so 
long  as  it  would  be  conceived  to  enlarge  the  freedom 
of  the  individual  in  the  pursuit  of  wealth.  From 


vin  SOCIAL  KINETICS  CONTINUED  293 

the  play  of  these  forces  would  arise  the  right  of 
taxation. 

But  this  discovery  of  the  power  of  taxation  would 
complicate  the  relations  of  the  government  with  pri- 
vate capitalists  in  a  very  intricate  manner  in  those 
groups  which  had  discovered  symbols  of  capital  more 
complex  than  mere  money.  By  these  new  instru- 
ments of  capitalization  large  and  long-continued 
public  debts  would  be  made  possible,  because  the 
debtor  could  hold  indefinitely  in  his  possession  sym- 
bols of  right  to  capital,  while  his  wealth  would  be  in- 
creasing itself  by  public  service  and  taxation.  There 
would  thus  arise  a  new  financial  relation  of  govern- 
ment to  capital,  by  which  the  government  would  tend 
to  exercise  direct  control  not  only  over  the  money  of 
the  realm,  but  also  over  such  part  of  the  new  in- 
struments of  capital  which  took  the  form  of  money. 
By  this  principle  government  protection  would  be 
beneficial  to  the  individual  by  its  regulation  of  the 
money-issuing  functions  of  private  capitalists.  Once 
this  desirability  of  government  control  would  be  per- 
ceived, that  function  would  not  pass  again  into  the 
hands  of  private  persons.  It  could  not  so  pass  be- 
cause capitalists,  in  the  mass,  would  have  learned 
that  their  liberty  for  the  pursuit  of  wealth  would  be 
better  served  by  public  function  than  by  private 
function. 

As  the  relations  between  government  and  capital 
become  more  complex,  the  government  assumes  in- 
creasingly large  numbers  of  industrial  functions,  all 
of  which  are  found  to  help  the  free  action  of  the 
economic  mechanism,  and  hence  the  more  general 
flow  of  wealth  to  the  many.  Thus  public  function 


294  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

has  replaced  private  function  in  the  means  of  com- 
munication most  freely  used  because  of  its  cheap- 
ness. No  system  of  communication,  privately  owned, 
could  be  so  cheap,  so  safe,  and  so  extensive  as  that 
of  the  postal  service  of  the  world's  nations.  Capital 
used  in  this  industrial  function  is  public  capital,  and 
the  wealth  in  that  capital  can  never  pass  again  into 
private  possession  because  public  postal  service  facili- 
tates the  economic  purpose  of  society,  and  furnishes 
instruments  for  wealth-getting  protected  by  all  the 
military  power  of  the  state.  Governments  have  in- 
stituted consular  services,  departments  of  labor,  sta- 
tistics, education,  agriculture,  commerce,  industry, 
posts  and  telegraphs,  fisheries,  geology  and  geodesy, 
meteorology,  insurance  and  marine,  mines,  and 
numerous  other  economic  and  intellectual  instru- 
ments which  have  been  found  to  be  useful  in  pro- 
moting the  freedom  of  the  economic  life  of  the 
community. 

The  assumption  by  the  government  of  these  func- 
tions is  approved  by  the  moral  sense  of  the  people, 
because  it  requires  very  little  experience  or  penetra- 
tion to  perceive  that  more  efficient  and  cheaper 
service  can  be  rendered  by  public  function  than  by 
private  function.  The  efficiency  of  a  public  service 
is  maintained  by  the  constant  pressure  of  the  social 
motive  to  which  the  public  service  ministers.  The 
wealth  earned  by  public  servants  is  seldom  large 
enough  for  the  satisfaction  of  more  than  their  basic 
desires.  Hence  deterioration  of  the  quality  of  their 
service  would  mean  loss  of  place  and  economic  dis- 
comfort for  themselves.  Whatever  may  be  the  na- 
ture of  the  public  service,  its  efficiency  must  enlarge 


VIII  SOCIAL   KINETICS   CONTINUED  295 

to  meet  the  growing  capacity  for  economic  freedom 
in  the  mass. 

It  is  manifest,  too,  that  all  that  is  needed  for  this 
progressive  transformation  of  private  capital  into 
public  capital  is  the  perception  by  society  of  the  new 
relation  to  the  environment  which  is  followed  by  the 
transformation  itself.  These  perceptions  are  only 
discoveries  in  economics.  They  are  no  different  in 
their  nature  from  discoveries  of  any  other  kind. 
They  followed,  in  perfect  sequence,  the  discoveries 
made  by  men  in  their  private  relations  to  one  another. 
Change  from  the  moving  to  the  fixed  habitation  fol- 
lowed the  discovery  of  agriculture.  By  that  change 
the  uses  of  money  were  made  larger  and  more  com- 
plex. Growth  in  kind  and  degree  of  capital  followed 
the  discovery  of  metallic  money.  Military  relations 
forced  government  to  take  over  control  of  the  mints. 

This  control  was  found  beneficial  to  social  freedom. 
The  discovery  of  commercial,  or  negotiable,  paper 
was  followed  by  wider  liberty  in  the  creation  and 
accumulation  of  private  wealth ;  and  government, 
in  assuming  control  over  this  new  form  of  capital, 
was  found,  in  the  process,  to  enlarge  and  make  safer 
the  freedom  of  the  individual.  The  discovery  was 
quite  as  "  accidental "  as  any  other  discovery,  and 
was  only  the  perception  of  a  new  relation  to  the  en- 
vironment. Other  discoveries,  by  which  the  category 
of  public  wealth  was  extended  to  things  which  were 
before  classified  with  private  wealth,  were  made  as 
the  environment  grew  in  quantity  and  kind. 

New  relations  of  this  character  would  be  discov- 
ered by  some  groups  and  not  by  others,  and  for  the 
same  reasons  that  new  uses  for  familiar  things  are 


296  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

discovered  by  some  individuals  and  not  by  others. 
These  reasons,  as  the  reader  will  probably  remember, 
are  found  in  the  rise  of  a  new  idea  from  the  contact 
of  the  complex  of  ideas  in  the  brain  with  a  complex 
of  relations  between  parts  of  the  environment.  If 
there  is  any  "accident"  in  nature,  it  is  of  this 
description.  The  progress  of  Europe  since  the  fif- 
teenth century  has  consisted  only  in  the  multiplica- 
tion of  such  discoveries  in  the  economic,  aesthetic, 
intellectual,  and  ethical  aspects  of  social  motion.  If 
China  has  not  made  any  progress  in  that  period,  it 
is  only  because  it  has  made  no  discoveries  of  a  simi- 
lar kind,  and  because  its  moral  conceptions  have  re- 
garded as  repugnant  the  utilities  developed  by  Europe. 
It  will  be  manifest  from  all  this  that  if  progress  is 
to  be  carried  farther  it  must  be  in  the  same  direc- 
tion and  by  the  enlargement  of  the  same  processes 
by  which  it  has  been  carried  forward  in  the  past. 
Social  progress  cannot  be  made  by  concentrating 
capital  in  the  possession  of  a  comparatively  few.  It 
can  be  made  only  by  a  process  the  reverse  of  this. 
And  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  test  of  the 
social  value  of  all  discoveries  lies  in  the  application 
of  the  moral  sense  of  the  majority  to  the  desirability 
of  the  results  of  the  action  to  which  the  discovery  is 
put. 

If,  for  example,  the  control  of  money  by  the  gov- 
ernment were  found  to  hurt  rather  than  help  the 
accumulation  of  wealth  by  the  masses,  the  masses 
would  condemn  such  control  as  being  wrong.  Gov- 
ernment would  therefore  abandon  the  control  of 
money.  The  same  logic  may  be  applied  to  all  other 
discoveries  of  new  governmental  relations.  But  as 


Vin  SOCIAL  KINETICS  CONTINUED  297 

the  capacity  of  men  for  the  possession  of  wealth 
increases  geometrically  with  new  possessions,  we 
should  expect  to  find  government  undertaking  func- 
tions beyond  the  economic  possibilities  of  the  en- 
vironment. That  is  to  say,  it  would  attempt  the 
impossible  task  of  distributing  wealth  which  did  not 
exist.  Before  government  can  use  capital  in  a 
manner  beneficial  to  the  masses,  natural  economic 
forces  must  have  produced  instruments  of  capitaliza- 
tion which  government  can  utilize.  Thus,  symbols 
of  wealth  are  useful  to  government  only  as  there  is 
real  wealth  out  of  which  they  arise.  A  cheap  or 
debased  currency  has  been  always  found  to  hinder 
and  not  to  help  the  freedom  of  industry.  The  power 
of  government  is,  in  its  nature,  and  always  was, 
essentially  capitalistic.  It  exercises,  in  a  public  way, 
the  same  power  which  the  capitalist  exercises  in  a 
private  way.  It  secures  services  for  the  public 
which  assist  the  public  in  the  accumulation  of 
wealth.  Its  political  power  is  based  upon  economic 
utility.  A  government  is  deemed  good  or  bad  in  the 
degree  in  which  it  expands  or  contracts  the  freedom 
of  the  pursuit  of  private  wealth.  Its  raison  d'etre  is 
the  preservation  of  the  group's  integrity  from  within 
and  from  without.  And  all  its  activities  are  con- 
ducted by  means  of  the  use  of  the  most  desirable 
parts  of  capital.  This  truth  becomes  self-evident 
when  we  remember  that  government  itself  is  only  a 
social  machine  by  which  the  social  body  is  enabled  to 
live  and  propagate. 

The  rulers  of  a  country  would  discover,  as  we 
have  indicated,  that  control  of  parts  of  capital,  and 
of  the  relations  of  capitalists,  would  help  social 


298  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

progress.  This  discovery  might  lead  to  certain  de- 
lusive conclusions  concerning  the  power  of  the  gov- 
ernment in  this  direction.  False  popular  beliefs 
would  naturally  arise,  and  we  should  expect  to  find 
political  superstitions  in  prosperous  communities. 
The  true  relations  of  money  to  economic  freedom 
not  being  fully  perceived,  government,  seeking  to 
satisfy  the  popular  increment  of  capacity,  would  be 
disposed  to  dilute  the  currency  under  the  delusion 
that  the  value  of  money  and  the  value  of  all  other 
forms  of  wealth  were  not  reciprocal.  But  this  super- 
stition would  tend  to  disappear  as  the  true  relations 
of  money  to  other  parts  of  wealth  were  perceived.  It 
would  be  found  that  economic  freedom  would  con- 
tract with  dilution  of  the  currency,  whether  that 
dilution  were  made  for  the  purposes  of  confiscation 
by  the  ruler,  or  for  purposes  of  larger  wealth  for  the 
masses.  Dilution  of  the  currency,  as  well  as  all 
other  over-exercise  of  the  taxing  power,  would  be- 
come repugnant  to  the  moral  ideas  of  the  masses  as 
this  excess  of  government  function  became  associated 
with  ideas  of  pain.  In  prosperous  communities -we 
have  not,  therefore,  observed  any  recent  attempts  at 
dividing  non-existent  wealth  by  this  method. 

But  there  are  other  political  superstitions  which 
still  exist  in  full  force,  and  only  because  the  true 
economic  relations  of  government  to  social  progress 
remain  as  yet  unperceived.  One  of  these  is  the 
delusion  that  a  tax  upon  industry  operates  so  as  to 
make  industry  more  free.  Popular  beliefs  that  "  pro- 
tection "  increases  wealth  are  of  a  kind  with  the 
belief  that  dilution  of  the  currency  does  the  same 
thing.  Both  are  mere  attempts  to  create  wealth  by 


vin  SOCIAL  KINETICS   CONTINUED  299 

enactment  of  law  and  then  to  divide  the  wealth  thus 
miraculously  manufactured.  The  reason  why  the 
one  superstition  does  not  disappear  is  because  the 
resultant  pain  is  less  severe,  and  is  not  readily 
associated  with  the  idea  of  protection.  The  relation 
of  money-capital  to  production  is  comparatively  sim- 
ple. That  of  taxation  for  protection  to  industry  is 
comparatively  complex.  The  one  is  easily  perceived. 
The  other  is  more  laboriously  perceived.  Hence  the 
superstition  of  protection  remains  in  many  prosper- 
ous communities.  But  such  communities  are  pros- 
perous not  because  of  protection,  but  in  spite  of  it. 

Such  illustrations  as  these  could  be  multiplied 
indefinitely,  and  could  be  pointed  out  in  the  common- 
places of  current  comment  upon  trade  and  its  gov- 
ernmental relations.  But  the  reader  will  find  no 
lack  of  these  for  himself.  Conflicting  beliefs  as  to 
the  causes  of  "good  times"  and  "bad  times"  are 
open  for  the  inspection  of  anybody  who  cares  to 
examine  them,  and  it  will  be  self-evident  that  all  of 
them  cannot  be  true.  Indeed,  we  cannot  be  far 
wrong  if  we  classify  all  of  them  under  the  head  of 
superstition.  What  we  have  said  thus  far  in  this 
book  will  be  of  small  import  if  that  conclusion  is  not 
already  plain. 

More  useful,  however,  will  it  be  to  consider  popular 
economic,  political,  and  moral  ideas  which  are  not 
superstitious.  These,  it  is  clear,  are  conceptions  of 
the  real  relations  of  government  and  private  capital 
to  social  progress.  Governmental  use  and  control  of 
money  has  been  found  to  be  highly  beneficial  to  the 
freely  moving  lives  of  men.  That  idea  is  organic  in 
all  prosperous  and  progressive  groups.  So  long  as 


3OO  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

present  uses  for  money  endure,  a  very  considerable 
part  of  it  will  always  continue  to  be  public  wealth. 
The  control  of  the  currency  can  never  lapse  into 
private  hands.  The  ideas  of  right  arising  out  of  gov- 
ernment's relations  to  money  forbid  it.  The  ideas 
of  eminent  domain,  of  taxation,  of  governmental  ser- 
vices, of  public  education,  all  forbid  it.  And  this 
is  true  because  men  have  perceived  the  true  relations 
of  this  form  of  capital  to  government  and  to  social 
progress.  It  is  admitted  by  everybody,  without  dis- 
sent, that  money,  or  its  derivative  form  of  capital,  is 
the  most  useful  instrument,  as  yet  perceived,  for  the 
accumulation  of  wealth  by  the  masses.  This  truth 
has  become  self-evident. 

It  will  hardly  be  a  matter  for  dispute  if  we  say  that 
improvements  in  machinery  have  been  the  cause  of 
an  increasingly  even  division  of  wealth  among  in- 
creasingly larger  numbers  of  individuals.  The  term 
"  machinery  "  will  cover  all  devices  for  the  purpose  of 
production,  communication,  and  transportation.  Out 
of  the  growth  of  mechanical  invention  arose  the 
factory  system  of  production  which  replaced  the 
simple  system  previously  existing.  By  the  factory 
system  the  number  of  prosperous  capitalists  would  be 
continually  increased.  The  new  wealth  created  in 
this  way  would  redound  to  the  workers,  as  these  could 
be  the  only  consumers  of  product  in  quantities  large 
enough  to  increase  the  wealth  of  capitalists.  But 
this  refluence  of  wealth  could  act  upon  the  producers 
in  one  way  only.  It  would  serve  to  enlarge  the  utility- 
capacity  of  the  wage-earners  for  the  possession  of 
still  larger  shares  of  the  product.  As  we  have  seen, 
the  increment  of  capacity  would  itself  be  subject  to 


viii  SOCIAL   KINETICS   CONTINUED  30 1 

an  increase,  and  wages  would  tend  to  rise.  But  with 
rising  wages  population  increases.  Wages  would 
oscillate  above  and  below  a  norm  determined  by  the 
productivity  of  industry. 

It  is  needful  to  make  this  conception  clear.  It 
should  be  manifest  that  at  any  given  moment  there 
could  be  no  demand  for  labor  beyond  that  quantity 
required  for  the  operation  of  the  productive  appa- 
ratus, land  included,  to  its  highest  possible  degree  of 
productivity.  A  capitalist,  operating  his  plant  to  its 
limit,  could  not  engage  the  services  of  more  laborers 
than  those  required  for  such  operation.  When,  there- 
fore, the  number  of  laborers  would  be  larger  than 
that  required  for  this  purpose,  wages  would  fall.  On 
the  contrary,  when  the  number  would  be  smaller  than 
this  requisite,  wages  would  rise.  It  will  be  observed 
that  in  a  progressive  community,  the  absolute  quan- 
tity of  the  producing  instruments  constantly  increases. 
But  there  is  a  disproportion  between  the  increase 
of  capital  and  the  increase  of  population.  Each  new 
"  dose  "  of  capital  would  be  larger  than  the  needs  of 
the  total  population  as  increased  by  rising  wages. 
This  disproportionate  increase  of  capital  would  be 
due  to  the  multiplication  of  the  number  of  capitalists 
and  to  the  extension  of  already  existing  plants  by 
entrepreneurs.  It  would  further  be  aided  by  new 
inventions  and  by  the  advance  in  the  efficiency  of 
machinery.  The  basic  forces  at  work  in  this  process 
are  found  in  the  enlarged  capacities,  among  men 
generally,  for  the  possession  of  wealth.  Multipli- 
cation of  capital  would  result  in  over-supplies  of 
*  product  and  this  redundancy  would  cause  a  fall  in 
the  price  of  commodities,  labor  included. 


302  THE   LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

A  paradox  in  economics  here  suggests  itself.  How 
can  we  account  for  capital  lying  idle  at  times  when 
there  is  sufficient  labor  to  operate  existing  apparatus 
nearly  to  its  full  capacity  ?  It  would  seem,  if  our 
principle  be  true,  that  there  could  never  come  a  time 
when  population  would  outstrip  capital  if  the  incre- 
ment of  capital  were  disproportionate  to  that  of 
population.  But  this  paradox  will  be  explained,  when 
we  remember  that  the  law  of  wages  we  have  here 
described  is  subject  to  a  modifying  force  found  in  the 
action  of  the  sublimated  forms  of  capital  known  as 
commercial  paper. 

This  force  is  a  purely  psychic  one.  Private  capital- 
ists are  no  less  eager  to  divide  imaginary  wealth  than 
are  legislators.  The  rapid  incrementation  of  capital 
is  accompanied  by  what  is  known  as  "  inflation  of 
values."  As  soon  as  men  begin  to  perceive  that  they 
have  been  dealing  largely  in  imaginary  wealth,  they 
immediately  set  to  work  rearranging  their  sublimated 
forms  of  capital  so  that  they  will  represent  real  and 
not  imaginary  possessions.  The  producing  capitalist 
is  therefore  constrained  to  cease  production  until 
psychological  values  are  in  equilibrium  with  the  pro- 
ducing power  of  industry.  Large  as  the  quantity  of 
real  wealth  may  be,  it  is  not  so  large  as  it  is  believed 
to  be.  If  men  who  have  money  refuse  to  allow  that 
money  to  be  used  for  productive  purposes,  it  matters 
little  whether  the  producing  power  of  the  economic 
apparatus  be  great  or  small.  And  such  refusal  will 
be  persisted  in  until  ideas  are  reduced  to  true  per- 
ceptions of  real  wealth.  It  will  be  seen,  however, 
that  in  spite  of  these  temporary  reactions,  and  these 
recurrent  over-supplies  of  product  and  of  labor,  the 


viii  SOCIAL   KINETICS   CONTINUED  303 

absolute  quantity  of  productive  instruments  and  the 
absolute  quantity  of  population,  in  a  progressive  com- 
munity, would  steadily  increase. 

Wages,  therefore,  would  rise  and  fall  above  and  be- 
low the  norm  determined  by  the  productivity  of  capi- 
tal at  work.  And  if  this  be  true,  it  is  manifest  that 
their  movement  would  be  progressive  with  the  progress- 
ing quantity  of  capital.  Wage-earners  would  find  that 
they  were  receiving  ever  enlarging  returns  of  wealth. 
If  we  describe  the  increase  of  capital  by  a  straight 
line,  and  describe  the  movement  of  wages  by  a  curv- 
ing line,  we  will  have  a  diagrammatic  conception  of 
the  law  of  wages  we  have  here  suggested.  And  as 
the  direction  of  the  straight  line  is  upwards,  the  sum 
of  the  motion  of  wages  will  be  carried  upwards  too. 
This  is  true  because  the  increase  in  the  quantity  of 
wealth  to  be  divided  among  wage-earners  would  be 
proportionally  larger  than  the  increase  in  the  number 
of  workers  to  whom  the  increasing  wealth  would  re- 
turn. We  should  therefore  expect  to  find  that  the 
lowest  wages  at  any  given  time  would  be  higher  than 
the  lowest  wages  at  any  previous  time,  and  that  the 
highest  wages  at  any  given  time  would  be  higher 
than  the  highest  wages  at  any  previous  time.  By 
this  action  the  norm  to  which  wages  tend  to  adjust 
themselves  would  constantly  shift  to  higher  and 
higher  levels.  And  this  norm  would  lie  at  the  inter- 
section of  the  highest  productivity  of  capital  with  the 
total  labor  power  of  the  population. 

The  academic  conception  of  the  "  standard  of  liv- 
ing "  to  which  laborers  are  accustomed  will  hence 
be  seen  to  have  very  little  to  do  with  the  increase  or 
the  maintenance  of  the  quantity  of  wealth  which 


304  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

flows  back  to  the  producers.  It  requires  small  pene- 
tration to  see  that  this  conception  of  the  determinant 
of  wages  is  an  inadequate  one.  It  is  difficult  to  con- 
ceive how  any  standard  of  living  could  draw  larger 
shares  of  product  from  the  capitalist  who  could  find 
a  surplus  of  labor,  however  small,  which  could  be 
bought  for  smaller  shares. 

For  how  is  a  "  standard  of  living "  to  be  fixed  ? 
Certainly  not  by  the  capitalist.  It  must  then  be 
fixed  by  the  laborer.  But  there  is  very  great  varia- 
tion in  the  desires  of  laborers  as  well  as  of  capitalists. 
It  would  be  as  logical  to  hold  that  the  profits  of  a 
capitalist  are  fixed  by  his  standard  of  living.  But 
we  know  very  well  that  such  is  not  the  case.  Some 
laborers  use  their  wealth  to  rear  families.  Some 
squander  it.  Some  save  it  in  order  to  convert  it  into 
capital  at  a  future  time.  The  standard  of  living  is 
lower  at  some  times  than  at  others.  But  if  it  deter- 
mined wages,  wages  would  never  fall ;  for  it  will  not 
be  argued  that  the  capacity  of  men  for  using  wealth  de- 
creaseswith  increase  of  possession,  among  laborers  any 
more  than  among  capitalists.  It  is  wages,  really, 
which  determine  the  standard  of  living,  not  the  reverse. 
And  as  wages  constantly  increase,  the  standard  of 
living  constantly  improves. 

This  action  of  the  increase  of  capital  upon  wages 
would  have,  as  we  have  already  said,  but  one  effect 
upon  the  mind  of  the  producer.  His  capacity  for  the 
use  of  wealth  would  enlarge.  The  increment  of 
capacity  in  the  capitalist  would  impel  him  to  add  to 
the  quantity  of  instruments  beyond  the  degree  justi- 
fied by  the  state  of  trade.  And  in  like  manner  the 
new  power  of  the  producer  would  impel  him  to  obtain 


viii  SOCIAL  KINETICS   CONTINUED  305 

wealth  in  quantities  greater  than  those  made  possible 
by  the  natural  progress  of  capitalization.  How  could 
this  desire  be  gratified  ?  It  should  be  manifest  that 
it  could  be  gratified  in  one  way  only,  namely,  by 
compelling  the  capitalist  to  surrender  larger  shares  of 
product  tJian  those  which  would  naturally  flow  back 
through  the  operation  of  the  wage-determining  force, 
The  capitalist  would  not  pay  higher  wages  when  he 
could  secure  as  efficient  labor  for  lower  wages.  But 
if  he  were  compelled  to  choose  between  smaller 
profits,  as  a  resultant  of  higher  wages,  and  a  reduc- 
tion of  his  profits  to  a  degree  which  approached  no 
profit  at  all,  or  positive  loss,  he  would  probably  choose 
the  former. 

Now  if  we  suppose  that  laborers  would  find  that 
by  uniting  together  and  forcing  a  choice  like  this  upon 
the  capitalist,  they  could  succeed  in  distraining  from 
him  quantities  of  wealth  greater  than  those  naturally 
flowing  back  to  them,  we  can  readily  comprehend 
how  they  would  continue  to  do  so.  All  that  would 
be  necessary  to  develop  this  kind  of  unition,  after  it 
had  once  been  produced,  would  be  the  perception 
that  it  was  followed  by  increased  returns  of  wealth. 
The  discovery  of  this  new  relation  would  be  of  a 
kind  with  all  other  discoveries.  It  would  matter  little 
how  it  was  made.  But  being  made,  we  can  see  how 
it  would  rapidly  become  social  among  workers.  It 
would  be  observed  that  trades  practising  it  received 
higher  wages  than  trades  which  did  not.  The  prac- 
tice would  receive  the  moral  disapproval  of  the  capi- 
talist, as  a  matter  of  course.  He  would  condemn  it 
precisely  as  the  hereditary  lord  condemns  a  curtail- 
ment of  his  power.  But  the  men  whom  it  benefited 


306  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

would  not  take  the  same  view.  By  them  the  practice 
would  be  approved  as  being  just.  This  idea,  once 
established,  would  be  difficult  to  dislodge,  especially 
if  the  practice  was  found  to  be,  on  the  whole,  con- 
ducive to  larger  liberties  for  the  satisfaction  of  the 
basic  desires  of  nutrition  and  propagation. 

The  growth  and  development  of  trades  unionism 
would  be  rapid  or  slow  according  to  the  selective 
value  of  association  in  the  various  arts  by  which 
wealth  was  created.  The  selective  value  of  associa- 
tion would  naturally  be  highest  in  those  occupa- 
tions in  which  uniformity  of  service-capacity  would 
be  greatest,  and  in  which  the  number  of  workers 
would  be  limited  by  a  necessary  preparatory  train- 
ing. Thus  those  skilled  trades  in  which  the  capacity 
of  the  most  efficient  and  the  least  efficient  workers 
would  not  vary  strikingly  from  the  average,  would 
rapidly  develop  the  social  character  we  have  de- 
scribed. Such  uniformity  would  be  assisted  by  the 
increasing  efficiency  of  inanimate  instruments.  In 
other  words,  the  skill  of  the  individual  laborer  would 
be  replaced  by  the  superior  efficiency  of  the  machine. 
But  the  value  of  association  would  be  no  less  appar- 
ent to  workers  in  all  those  trades  in  which  none  but 
an  insignificant  few  could  rise  to  very  remunerative 
positions. 

On  the  other  hand  trades  unionism  would  not  com- 
mend itself  to  workers  with  whom  potential  advance- 
ment would  always  be  present.  Unionism  in  such 
occupations  would  be  manifestly  conceived  to  be 
undesirable.  These  trades  or  employments  would 
necessarily  present  a  character  very  different  from 
those  in  which  unionism  would  flourish.  In  them, 


viii  SOCIAL   KINETICS  CONTINUED  307 

we  should  find  grades  of  wages  and  potential  equality 
for  persons  in  lower  grades  to  advance  to  higher 
grades.  Efficiency  in  lower  grades  would  promote 
advancement  to  the  higher  ;  whereas  in  trades  adapt- 
able to  unionism,  the  very  efficiency  developed  in  one 
trade,  or  grade,  would  tend  to  make  change  to  an- 
other grade,  or  trade,  impossible.  Thus,  in  the 
inadaptable  occupations,  the  efficient  laborer  would 
have  every  incentive  to  work  for  promotion  while  in 
the  adaptable  trades  he  would  have  none.  Accom- 
panying this  difference  in  potential  promotion  we 
find  a  very  significant  fact.  It  is  this :  the  trades 
most  adaptable  to  union  are  those  concerned  with  the 
creation  of  wealth ;  and  those  least  adaptable  are 
those  concerned  with  its  circulation.  Again,  those 
employments  concerned  with  circulation  in  which 
union  is  practised  with  favorable  results,  are  those  in 
which  there  is  least  potential  equality  for  promotion. 

It  is  only  natural  to  expect  that  the  value  of  union 
would  be  most  manifest  to  those  workers  who  could 
plainly  see  the  impossibility  of  promotion.  And 
when  unionism  would  be  ever  ready  at  hand  for  use, 
it  is  only  natural  to  expect  that  such  laborers  would 
use  it.  The  use  of  the  union  would  be  distinctly 
wrong  to  the  notions  of  the  wage-earners  who  could 
see  that  by  that  use  their  potential  equality  —  or 
opportunities  —  would  be  curtailed.  But  once  they 
begin  to  see  that  opportunity  for  promotion  is  largely 
imaginary,  and  that  they  are  counting,  not  upon 
real  potential  increase  of  wealth,  but  upon  increase 
from  wealth  which  has  no  existence,  they  tend  to 
regard  unionism  with  increasing  moral  approbation. 

We  should  thus  expect  to  find  that  trades  unionism, 


308  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

or  a  principle  very  like  it,  should  tend  to  influence 
the  ideas,  if  not  the  conduct,  of  wage-earners  in 
branches  of  industry  more  and  more  removed  from 
the  actual  occupations  of  production.  This  change 
of  ideas  would  be  no  more  than  the  growing  percep- 
tion of  a  relation  between  labor  and  capital  easily  and 
long  before  perceived  by  those  whose  employments 
left  no  room  for  superstitious  conceptions  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  division  of  wealth. 

It  would  seem  to  be  clear  from  the  foregoing  that 
the  ideas  of  wealth-division  which  have  caused  the 
development  of  labor  unionism  in  enlightened  groups 
are  true  ideas  and  not  superstitious  ones.  Unionism 
has  been  found  to  be  good.  It  has  given  higher 
wages  to  those  who  practise  it.  The  method  of 
unionism  is  extending  to  wider  and  wider  circles  of 
workers.  There  is  no  question  in  the  mind  of  the 
producer  as  to  the  efficiency  of  the  method  he  uses. 
He  is  not  puzzled  with  that  uncertainty  which 
attaches  to  other  methods.  He  does  not  clearly 
understand  the  method  proposed  for  his  betterment 
by  changes  in  the  currency,  or  by  a  change  in  the 
system  of  taxation  for  protection  to  industry.  The 
method  of  trades  unionism  was  not  suggested  to  him 
by  a  statesman.  The  discovery  of  its  power  was 
made  by  simple"  repetition  of  experience.  The  sim- 
plicity of  the  method  was  as  great  as  the  simplicity 
of  other  methods  which  had  been  quickly  perceived 
and  quickly  compounded  with  social  motion  in  gen- 
eral. Like  many  other  methods  of  righting  conceived 
wrongs,  it  was  based  upon  force.  Like  them  it  was 
approved  at  first  only  by  the  few  whom  it  benefited ; 
then  by  the  many  whom  it  benefited ;  then  by  all 


viii  SOCIAL  KINETICS  CONTINUED  309 

those  who  at  first  conceived  it  to  be  injurious  to  them- 
selves ;  and  lastly  by  the  highest  instruments  of  gov- 
ernment, which  have  asserted,  after  much  procrastina- 
tion, that  it  is  an  inalienable  right  to  be  enforced  by 
the  military  power  of  the  state,  if  need  be. 

In  considering  the  relations  of  government  to  capi- 
tal, we  have  been  led  to  the  conclusion  that  when 
true  relations  of  this  kind  are  perceived,  they  at  once 
become  organic.  We  should  expect,  therefore,  that 
as  government  is  the  most  powerful  implement  of 
force  in  a  state,  it  should  be  called  upon  to  assist  the 
process  by  which  wealth  is  divided  in  more  than  a 
merely  passive  way.  Government  control  has  been 
found  to  be  the  most  highly  efficient  method  of 
enlarging  liberty  when  it  uses  capital  for  this  pur- 
pose, and  only  when  it  does  so.  But  the  use  to 
which  it  puts  capital,  if  this  use  is  to  be  desirably 
effective,  must  be  essentially  the  same  as  the  uses  to 
which  capital  is  put  when  it  is  in  private  hands. 
That  is  to  say,  the  use  must  result  in  the  creation 
of  new  capital,  or  in  easing  the  social  motion  which 
issues  in  ever  enlarging  returns  of  real  wealth  to  ever 
enlarging  numbers  of  individuals.  This  is  the  theory 
upon  which  is  based  all  subsidy  of  wealth  for  the 
creation  or  enlargement  of  the  industry  of  the  people. 
The  purpose  of  subsidies  is  easily  understood  by  the 
most  uncultured  men  and  readily  approved  by  them. 

When  government  uses  capital  for  purposes  other 
than  these,  the  effect  upon  the  community  must  be 
painful,  and  such  use  will  be  condemned  as  wrong 
even  by  that  individual  who  is  perfectly  guileless  of 
statecraft.  We  should  therefore  expect  to  find  that, 
in  the  more  progressive  communities,  the  quantity  of 


310  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

public  capital,  whether  it  be  in  land,  or  in  subsidized 
land,  or  other  forms  of  wealth,  should  be  larger  than 
in  less  progressive  states.  There  should  likewise  be 
found  relatively  larger  quantities  of  non-productive 
public  wealth  in  poorer  communities  than  in  richer 
ones,  because  in  poorer  communities  the  use  of  pri- 
vate wealth  for  pleasure  would  be  comparatively  con- 
tracted. Common  moral  ideas  would  approve  the 
public  use  of  capital,  in  any  manner  whatsoever,  so 
long  as  such  use  would  be  seen  to  redound  to  the 
public  good,  and  the  term  "  public  good  "  is  equiv- 
alent to  "equality  in  wealth."  This  would  be  true 
in  spite  of  all  ideas  to  the  contrary  held  by  the  indi- 
viduals whose  liberties  in  obtaining  wealth  would  be 
contracted  by  such  public  capitalization.  "  Compe- 
tition "  with  government  is  an  organically  undesirable 
idea  with  capitalists.  Yet  this  disapproval  of  the 
few  whose  freedom  would  be  restricted  would  have 
no  influence  on  the  common  idea  of  right  and  wrong 
in  this  connection.  Moral  progress  does  not  consist 
of  morality  in  the  few  but  in  the  many.  The  defini- 
tion of  moral  progress  arises  out  of  the  definition  of 
economic  progress. 

If,  now,  we  admit  that  social  motion  is  in  the  direc- 
tion of  a  perfectly  even  division  of  total  product 
among  all,  it  is  clear  that  this  purpose  can  be  en- 
compassed only  by  the  enlargement,  rapid  or  slow, 
of  the  category  of  public  wealth  in  capital.  And  it 
is  clear  also  that  the  more  rapidly  the  category  of 
public  capital  increases,  the  more  rapid  will  be  the 
acceleration  of  social  motion  toward  that  level  of 
wealth  we  have  assumed  to  be  the  permanent  equilib- 
rium of  social  forces.  If  any  conclusion  other  than 


vm  SOCIAL  KINETICS   CONTINUED  31! 

this  be  drawn,  it  must  be  one  which  holds  that  social 
forces  are  flowing  in  an  opposite  direction,  and  this 
conclusion  is  shown  to  be  false  by  the  most  conspicu- 
ous fact  open  to  the  most  casual  observation.  So 
long  as  capital  remains  in  private  hands,  there  must 
be  capitalists  and  wage-earners.  And  so  long  as 
there  are  capitalists,  protected  in  their  rights  by  the 
military  power  of  government,  there  can  be  no  limit 
to  their  psychic  capacity  for  the  possession  of  the 
things  by  which  wealth  is  created.  Indeed,  as  we 
have  seen  elsewhere,  the  desire  for  possession  will 
be  found,  in  some  extraordinarily  developed  instances 
of  incrementation,  to  be  limited  only  by  the  whole 
quantity  of  capital  to  which  the  property  right 
extends. 

The  action  of  this  capacity  may  be  limited  by  the 
action  of  wage-earners  who,  by  association-force,  dis- 
train increasingly  large  shares  of  the  wealth  created. 
But  the  instruments  of  creation,  which  are  essentially 
the  most  desirable  form  of  wealth,  must  remain  in 
private  hands,  and  will  continue  so  to  remain  as  long 
as  most  individuals  believe  that  their  desires  are 
best  served  by  this  method.  But  if  we  suppose  that 
a  change  of  opinion  should  be  produced,  no  matter 
how,  it  is  evident  that  the  change  could  be  followed 
by  but  one  action.  That  action  could  take  only  the 
form  of  a  distraint  from  capitalists,  not  of  parts  of 
their  profits,  but  of  additional  parts  of  capital  itself. 

The  higher  forms  of  capital  we  have  considered, 
in  the  form  of  stocks  and  bonds,  confer  upon  the 
directing  capitalist,  as  we  have  seen,  the  peculiar 
power  of  appropriating  undue  shares  of  the  product 
from  his  non-directing  partners.  They  give  him  a 


312  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

higher  power  than  even  this.  They  enable  him  to 
take  from  the  many,  who  are  not  his  partners,  quan- 
tities of  wealth  which,  were  it  not  for  this  power, 
would  flow  back  to  consumers  of  every  kind,  whether 
producers  or  not. 

However  large  may  be  the  number  of  non-direct- 
ing partners  or  shareholders  in  capital,  they  cannot 
prevent  the  directing  capitalist  from  thus  appropriat- 
ing wealth  which  they  consider  their  own.  His  action 
may  be  legal  enough,  but  legality  or  the  reverse  plays 
no  part  in  the  desire  of  the  many  for  wealth.  The 
essential  fact  is  this  difference  of  power.  The  instru- 
ments of  capitalization  confer  this  power  on  the 
director  and  do  not  confer  it  on  the  others.  Thus 
it  will  be  seen  that  although  the  number  of  capital- 
ists has  been  very  largely  increased  by  the  new 
methods  of  capitalization,  these  methods,  if  incom- 
parably superior  to  the  old,  do  not  insure  a  perfectly 
proportional  division.  And  the  most  important  con- 
sideration is  not  that  which  concerns  the  power  of 
the  directing  capitalist  over  his  partners,  but  that 
which  concerns  his  power  over  others.  These  latter 
make  up  the  very  great  majority  of  the  individuals 
whose  liberties  are  affected  by  the  new  method.  We 
should  look  for  the  advancing  moral  ideas  of  the 
many  to  issue  in  action  sooner  than  those  of  the  few. 
For  the  comparatively  small  number  of  non-directing 
partners  would  not  be  impelled  to  restrict  the  power 
of  the  director  if  they  conceived  that  such  restriction 
would  issue  in  restriction  of  themselves. 

We  would  therefore  find  moral  ideas  of  three  kinds 
with  respect  to  capital  in  progressive  groups.  First, 
the  ideas  of  the  directing  capitalist,  who  would  deem 


vni  SOCIAL   KINETICS   CONTINUED  313 

it  wrong  to  restrain  his  power  of  accumulation  in  any 
manner  whatsoever  ;  secondly,  the  ideas  of  non-direct- 
ing capitalists,  and  of  capitalists  without  partners,  who 
would  deem  it  right  to  restrain  the  director  from  the 
use  of  such  power ;  and,  lastly,  the  ideas  of  all  others 
who,  it  is  manifest,  would  not  be  capitalists  at  all. 
These  last  would  not  only  deem  it  right  to  restrain 
the  use  of  the  power  of  the  director,  and  of  his  part- 
ners as  well,  but  to  deprive  them  of  their  very  power 
itself.  But  the  outcome  of  such  deprivation  could 
manifestly  take  no  other  form  than  the  forcible  trans- 
fer of  that  kind  of  capital  used  in  the  exercise  of  the 
power  over  to  the  category  of  public  wealth. 

There  is  no  other  alternative,  and  it  is  not  difficult 
to  see  the  truth  of  this  statement.  So  long  as  capi- 
tal, managed  in  this  way,  —  that  is,  by  the  new  and 
compound  method  of  capitalization,  —  remains  in  pri- 
vate hands,  the  power  we  have  described  will  continue 
to  exist.  So  long  as  it  exists  it  will  enable  capitalists, 
directing  and  non-directing,  to  acquire  ever  enlarging 
shares.  These  new  acquisitions  will  only  serve  to 
intensify  and  extensify  the  action  by  which  the  wealth 
of  capitalists  is  enlarged.  We  must  accept  this  con- 
clusion. If  we  refuse  to  accept  it,  we  will  be  driven 
to  hold  that  an  increase  in  wealth  does  not  increase 
the  desire  for  wealth,  but  lessens  it.  As  for  the 
latter  conclusion,  we  hardly  believe  it  will  be  insisted 
upon  by  anybody.  There  is  no  conceivable  escape, 
then,  from  the  first  conclusion. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  conceive  superstitious  ideas 
concerning  social  progress.  We  can  conceive  of  a 
capitalist  becoming  so  sated  with  possession  as  volun- 
tarily to  surrender  his  power,  and  voluntarily  to  divide 


314  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

his  product  equally  among  the  producers.  We  can 
conceive  of  all  capitalists  doing  the  same  thing.  And 
we  can  conceive  of  social  motion  reaching  its  level  by 
a  process  of  this  kind.  But  such  ideas  as  these  are 
not  organic  in  society,  because  they  are  false  ideas, 
and  the  number  of  persons  conceiving  them  has  been 
insignificantly  small  in  all  human  history.  They  are 
repugnant  to  common  experience  and  to  the  common 
conception  of  self-interest.  The  ideal  altruist,  ad- 
mirable enough  in  the  abstract,  has  been  set  down 
always  as  a  man  of  highly  impracticable  ideas,  and  is 
so  set  down  to-day,  if  not  in  exact  words,  at  least  in 
universal  practice.  That  philanthropist  who  gives 
all  his  wealth  to  others  is  regarded  as  an  anomaly,  if 
not  mentally  unsound. 

The  only  true  conception,  then,  we  can  have  of 
social  motion,  is  that  found  in  the  idea  that  it  is  right 
to  limit,  by  force,  or  to  take  away  altogether,  the 
power  of  the  individual  to  accumulate  wealth  when 
such  action  is  conceived  to  be  hurtful  to  the  freedom 
of  the  many.  That  this  idea  is  organic  in  progressive 
communities  will  be  clear  when  we  remember  the 
state  of  opinion  which  prevails  in  the  United  States 
of  America.  We  instance  that  group  because  the 
idea  there  has  assumed  its  extreme  form.  So  long  as 
vast  accumulations  of  capital  were  not  conceived  to 
interfere  with  social  progress,  such  accumulations 
were  approved  by  the  popular  moral  sense.  But  as 
soon  as  this  opinion  was  changed,  the  popular  moral 
sense  began  the  reverse  action.  The  method  of  ac- 
cumulation had  nothing  to  do  with  the  change  of 
the  moral  idea.  The  selfsame  act  which  was  once 
approved  as  right  was  now  condemned  as  wrong. 


vin  SOCIAL   KINETICS   CONTINUED  315 

There  had  been  no  change  in  the  motive  of  capitalists. 
The  change  in  the  method  of  capitalization  had  been 
approved  at  first.  It  was  not  condemned  at  last. 
But  the  result  of  the  method  was  very  distinctly  con- 
demned and  is  condemned  to-day.  No  capitalist  is 
now  conceived  to  have  a  right  to  such  power  of 
accumulation.  The  moral  sense  attaches  but  a  vague 
condemnation  to  the  desires  of  the  capitalist  for  unlim- 
ited possession.  That  is  because  the  community  is 
very  rich  in  private  wealth  generally  distributed.  For 
if  it  were  not  thus  rich,  there  could  be  no  perception 
of  the  injustice  of  extraordinary  possessions  in  com- 
paratively few  hands.  This  latter  state  would  then 
be  organic,  as  in  Russia. 

Let  it  be  considered,  too,  that  conceptions  of  justice 
concerning  wealth  always  concern  relative  and  not 
absolute  wealth.  The  individual  measures  the  justice 
of  large  or  small  possessions  for  himself  or  others  by 
his  own  capacity  for  the  use  of  possessions,  large  or 
small.  If  his  capacity  be  large,  he  desires  large  pos- 
sessions ;  and  if  he  believe  that  large  possessions 
for  others  involve  small  possessions  for  himself,  he 
will  conceive  of  such  large  possessions  as  being 
wrong.  But  to  develop  this  idea  it  is  only  required 
that  the  quantity  of  his  wealth  should  constantly  in- 
crease, and  that  the  method  of  division  should  not  be 
so  rapidly  altered  as  to  satisfy  his  ever  enlarging 
capacity  for  the  use  of  wealth.  Thus  it  is  that  in 
America  we  find  a  constantly  increasing  effort  of 
government  to  curtail  the  power  of  the  capitalist,  not 
over  the  wealth  he  produces,  but  over  the  capital  he 
controls.  And  this  is  the  one  action  we  have  seen  to 
be  the  only  one  possible  if  the  observed  flow  of  social 


3l6  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

forces  is  to  continue  in  the  direction  they  have  taken 
in  the  past  and  are  taking  in  the  present  time.  If  it 
seem  to  be  paradoxical  that  the  moral  sense  of  a  com- 
munity should  condemn  conduct  which  seems  to  have 
been  beneficial  to  the  masses,  the  paradox  will  be 
explained  when  we  remember  that  what  was  once 
deemed  good  is  now  deemed  bad.  We  must  not 
counterpoise  present  capacities  with  past  wealth.  The 
laborer  who  was  formerly  contented  with  a  wage  very 
close  to  the  subsistence  line  is  now  discontented  with 
a  wage  very  much  above  it. 

If,  therefore,  we  find  that  government  seeks  above 
all  else  to  distrain  from  the  capitalist  ever  enlarging 
parts  of  his  wealth  through  government  interference, 
not  with  his  wealth,  but  with  his  capital,  we  should 
be  prepared  to  conclude  that  the  true  relation  of  gov- 
ernment to  capital  is  being  perceived  by  the  masses, 
of  whom  the  government  seeks  to  be  the  most  efficient 
servitor.  The  fact  that  government  use  of  large  parts 
of  capital  in  money  is  beneficial  was  easy  to  perceive. 
The  broader  fact  that  entire  government  control  of 
money  is  beneficial  was  also  easy  of  perception.  The 
fact  that  government  control  of  the  new  method  of 
capitalization  is  good  is  now  so  well  perceived  as  to 
have  become  organic  in  at  least  one  progressive  com- 
munity, and  that  one  the  wealthiest  in  the  world. 
The  still  broader  fact  that  government  use  of  the 
things  which  create  wealth  is  the  only  conceivable 
method  by  which  private  use  can  be  replaced,  is  in 
process  of  being  perceived  and  in  rapid  process. 
Once  perceived  as  clearly  as  have  been  the  other 
facts  we  have  indicated,  and  action  must  follow  in 
precisely  the  same  way. 


vin  SOCIAL  KINETICS   CONTINUED  317 

There  is  yet  to  be  considered  a  conception  of 
philanthropy  with  which  we  have  not  dealt.  Phi- 
lanthropy, as  evidenced  by  the  bestowal  of  wealth 
upon  others,  is  a  social  fact  of  great  importance. 
But  its  true  relation  to  social  progress  will  be  per- 
ceived when  we  regard  charity  as  an  effect,  and  not 
a  cause,  of  the  flow  of  social  forces.  If  charity,  or 
philanthropy,  is  held  to  be  more  than  a  derivative, 
collateral,  or  confluent  cause  of  social  motion,  we  are 
met  with  insuperable  contradictions  of  thought.  It 
should  be  understood  at  the  outset  that  we  do  not 
contend  that  wealth  given  in  charity  to  others  has 
not  the  same  effect  upon  those  benefited  as  does 
wealth  acquired  in  any  other  way.  We  know  very 
well  that  it  has.  Possession,  no  matter  how  encom- 
passed, increases  capacity.  But  the  desire  to  give 
freely  to  others  is  not  a  basic  desire,  and  hence  not 
a  natural  or  inherited  character.  It  is  always  an 
acquired  character.  If  this  be  true,  it  would  follow 
that  charitable  desires  are  not  a  cause  but  an  effect 
of  social  motion. 

Looking  broadly  at  philanthropy,  we  cannot  say 
that  it  has  had  much  effect  upon  the  progress  of 
society.  History  supplies  few  examples  of  the  strong 
man  surrendering  his  state  from  purely  altruistic 
motives.  Such  surrender  has  almost  always  been  an 
enforced  surrender.  We  take  no  account  of  post  obit 
gifts,  for  a  man  cannot  be  held  to  surrender  anything 
when  he  is  dead.  And  very  generous  bequests  in 
charity  are  so  rare,  even  in  the  present  time,  as  to  excite 
unusual  comment.  If  we  compare  the  effect  of  charity 
upon  social  progress  with  that  of  the  other  forces  con- 
sidered thus  far,  we  will  have  to  admit  its  evanescence. 


318  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

It  must  be  admitted  also  that  every  restriction 
upon  the  action  of  extraordinary  capacity  for  posses- 
sion has  been  enforced  upon  the  few  by  the  moral 
sense  of  the  many.  Moral  force  is  one  of  the  essen- 
tial factors  of  the  civilizing  process.  The  degree  of 
violence  necessary  in  the  act  of  limitation  may  always 
be  measured  by  the  strength  of  the  government  in 
which  the  reform  is  desired.  If  the  government  be 
strong,  the  degree  of  violence  will  be  high.  If  it  be 
weak,  the  degree  of  violence  will  be  low.  But  in  pros- 
perous states  government  is  always  weaker  than  in 
poor  ones.  This  is  the  fact  because  the  more  equable 
division  of  wealth  must  ever  develop  more  equal 
political  power  for  the  individual.  If  the  power  of 
government  be  essentially  capitalistic,  we  should  ex- 
pect that  in  a  community  in  which  capital  is  generally 
distributed  the  political  power  of  the  masses  should 
be  very  high.  And  in  proportion  as  the  number  of 
capitalists  would  be  large,  we  should  look  for  the 
group  to  be  democratic  in  character.  It  is  hardly 
necessary  to  say  that  such  are  the  observed  facts  of 
history. 

Restraint,  then,  of  the  greedy  minority  would  be 
easier  in  prosperous  groups  than  in  the  reverse,  but 
that  restraint  would  be  none  the  less  of  a  forceful 
kind.  The  surrender  of  wealth,  or  of  power  to  ac- 
quire it,  would  therefore  be  an  enforced  and  not  a 
voluntary  surrender.  That  surrender  becomes  volun- 
tary only  when  by  it  the  individual  does  not  lose  his 
power  to  acquire.  We  have  seen  that  economic  forces 
are  convertible  into  moral  forces.  If  this  be  true,  we 
can  conceive  of  an  ever  increasing  majority  pressing 
the  rights  of  an  ever  decreasing  minority  to  the 


vin  SOCIAL   KINETICS   CONTINUED  319 

vanishing  point.  But  it  will  hardly  be  contended 
that  the  ideas  of  the  minority  are  the  cause  of  the 
pressure,  and  we  would  be  compelled  so  to  contend 
if  we  held  that  charity  is  the  cause  of  social  motion. 
When  we  see  the  pride  of  descent  from  noble  ances- 
tors surviving  in  remote  descendants,  we  can  hardly 
be  justified  in  believing  that  the  idea  of  nobility  will 
become  repugnant  to  all  men  until  all  nobles  have 
been  eliminated.  When  nobility  itself  shall  have 
ceased  to  exist,  it  will  be  because  a  majority  has  so 
willed  it.  And  whenever  a  majority  has  taken  this 
action,  the  action  has  been  of  a  forceful  kind. 

It  is  entirely  possible  to  conceive  of  a  moral  state 
in  which  private  capital  would  be  condemned  as 
nobility  is  now  condemned  in  the  United  States  of 
America.  But  we  cannot  see  our  way  clear  to  con- 
ceiving that  this  state  could  be  brought  about  by  the 
voluntary  action  of  capitalists.  If  England  had 
waited  for  the  king  and  the  nobles  voluntarily  to 
curtail  their  own  power,  the  state  of  England  would 
not  be  as  free  as  it  is  to-day.  We  can  conceive  of  a 
capitalist  becoming  so  very  charitable  as  to  be  moved 
to  turn  over  his  capital  to  the  public.  And  we  can 
conceive  how  this  action  might  be  followed  by  the 
more  or  less  forcible  confiscation  of  other  capital. 
With  the  elimination  of  capitalists  altogether,  we  can 
conceive  of  a  common  moral  sense  to  which  private 
capital  would  be  highly  repugnant,  as  we  find  a 
moral  sense  in  America,  to-day,  to  which  the  notion 
of  nobility  is  highly  repugnant.  But  we  cannot 
conceive  that  this  organic  moral  idea  could  be  pro- 
duced by  any  method  other  than  that  we  have  found 
to  be  normal  in  social  growth.  That  method  is  dis- 


320  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

traint  by  force,  and  by  force  of  popular  opinion 
aroused  by  increase  of  general  wealth. 

In  this  discussion  we  have  dwelt  only  upon  phi- 
lanthropy when  its  action  is  caused  by  genuinely 
altruistic  motives.  Such  charity  as  is  caused  by 
egoistic  motives  —  and  by  that  term  we  mean  gifts 
for  the  sake  of  the  honor  they  bring  to  the  donor  — 
is  no  less  a  confluent  cause  of  progress  than  that 
produced  by  altruistic  motives.  It  is  caused  by  the 
motion  of  the  main  body  of  social  forces,  and  although 
it  swells  the  current  of  progress,  it  is  drawn  into  the 
flow  by  the  superior  force  of  the  flow  itself.  This 
principle  will  be  best  illustrated  by  the  effect  pro- 
duced by  labor  unions  upon  capitalists.  These  as- 
sociations have  won  every  step  of  their  way  by 
methods  of  force,  and  in  the  beginning  of  their 
existence  by  perfectly  lawless  deeds  of  violence.  The 
method  was  condemned,  not  only  by  capitalists,  but 
by  a  far  more  numerous  part  of  the  communities  in 
which  the  method  was  used.  But  with  the  extension 
of  the  method,  and  with  the  general  perception  of 
its  efficiency,  it  was  approved  first  by  the  common 
moral  sense,  and  then  by  government.  When  capi- 
talists found  that  by  yielding  to  its  force  they  were 
conserving  their  capital  rather  than  dissipating  it, 
they  accepted  the  method  as  being  most  opportune. 
And  lastly  some  capitalists,  in  order  to  secure  quicker 
and  surer  means  of  conservation  and  increase,  osten- 
tatiously accepted  it.  The  principle  of  force  in 
labor-unionism  thus  became  organic  in  progressive 
societies. 

But  who  will  contend  that  the  result  produced  by 
labor-unionism  could  have  been  produced  by  the 


vai  SOCIAL  KINETICS   CONTINUED  321 

voluntary  surrender  of  wealth  by  capitalists  ?  If  the 
force  of  union  were  withdrawn  now,  would  not  capi- 
talists quickly  resort  to  the  ancient  methods  ?  Should 
we  not  expect  that  the  acquired  character  of  union- 
contract  between  labor  and  capital  would  give  way 
to  the  former  character  of  individual  contract  ?  And 
would  not  this  reverse  process  tend  to  eliminate  those 
capitalists  who,  in  order  to  gain  the  good  opinion  of 
men,  ostentatiously  bind  themselves  to  surrender 
larger  shares  of  their  wealth  than  the  actual  produc- 
ing power  of  their  capital  would  make  necessary  ? 
Ostentatious  charity,  therefore,  may  be  regarded  as 
of  a  kind  with  the  ostentatious  liberality  of  capital- 
ists, and  the  ostentatious  "  democracy "  of  kings. 
And  all  these  are  mere  capitulations  to  force.  They 
have  as  little  to  do  with  the  basic  causes  of  social 
motion  as  has  the  rotundity  of  a  planet  with  the 
motion  it  takes  about  its  axis.  To  conceive  of  the 
sphericity  of  a  planet  as  producing  its  axial  rotation 
is  as  logical  as  to  conceive  of  charity  producing  social 
growth.  The  planet  is  round  because  it  rotates. 
Remove  the  force  of  rotation,  and  the  planet  will 
instantly  assume  a  form  very  different  from  that  pro- 
duced and  maintained  by  its  axial  revolution. 

Before  concluding  our  discussion  of  the  nature  and 
causes  of  economic  progress  toward  an  equal  division 
of  wealth,  we  must  touch  upon  one  last  and  essential 
conception.  This  is  the  method  by  which  capital 
must  pass  over  from  the  category  of  private  to  that 
of  public  function.  What  we  have  thus  far  written 
will  have  been  to  no  purpose,  if  it  be  not  now  clear 
that  the  function  of  government  is  entirely  and  essen- 
tially capitalistic.  That  it  is  a  true  conception  is 


322  THE   LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

made  manifest  by  a  very  careful  analysis  of  govern- 
ment itself  and  its  necessity  in  progressive  social 
groups.  Government  and  capital  are  the  two  most 
important  social  facts  arising,  with  all  their  compli- 
cations, from  the  fundamental  relation  of  the  cumu- 
lative environment  in  the  unchanging  locality.  That 
there  is  a  causal  nexus  between  the  two  facts  should 
be  apparent  upon  the  slightest  consideration.  Govern- 
ment is  most  necessary  in  those  groups  in  which  the 
use  of  capital  is  most  widely  diffused.  The  diffusion 
of  political  power  can  always  be  measured  by  the 
diffusion  of  capitalistic  power.  In  the  degree  in 
which  an  individual  possesses  wealth  will  he  be  pow- 
erful with  a  highly  centralized  government,  and  this 
kind  of  a  government  is  customarily  and  inaccurately 
denoted  by  the  term  "  strong."  But  true  strength  of 
government  does  not  pertain  to  centralization,  but 
rather  to  diffusion  of  political  power.  In  highly 
capitalistic  countries  the  government  is  strong  in  its 
enforcement  of  the  moral  ideas  of  the  many  against 
the  moral  ideas  of  the  few.  Thus  we  find  that  eco- 
nomic progress  is  accompanied  by  ethical  and  political 
progress.  The  first  is  the  cause  of  the  two  others. 
In  the  most  highly  capitalistic  communities,  too,  we 
find  that  true  ideas  of  government  relations  to  capital 
are  most  widely  diffused.  In  them  government  is 
most  used  to  enlarge  the  freedom  of  the  masses,  and 
least  used  to  enlarge  the  freedom  of  the  few.  If  it 
is  weak  in  the  latter  function,  it  is  strong  in  the 
former.  This  principle  may  be  generalized  by  saying 
that  the  diffusion  of  political  power  varies  with  the 
diffusion  of  capital.  If  this  be  a  true  law,  it  is  mani- 
fest that  motion  which  accelerates  the  growth  of  demo- 


vni  SOCIAL   KINETICS   CONTINUED  323 

cratic  government  can  act  in  but  one  way.  That  is, 
it  must  draw  government  and  capital  ever  closer 
together.  But  there  must  be  some  limit  to  this  proxi- 
mation.  And  the  only  conceivable  limit  is  that  which 
is  found  in  actual  contact.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to 
point  out  that  this  contact  can  be  none  other  than  the 
actual  use  of  capital  by  government  in  most  of  the 
functions  for  which  capital  is  used.  There  are  but 
two  other  conclusions.  The  first  is  that  the  economic 
motion  can  be  brought  to  a  stop  while  the  political 
motion  continues.  But  we  cannot  accept  this  con- 
clusion, because  political  progress  has  been  found  to 
be  dependent  upon  economic  progress.  The  second 
conclusion  lies  in  the  conception  that  political  and 
economic  progress  consists  in  the  centralization  of 
political  and  capitalistic  power  in  the  hands  of  an 
ever  decreasing  minority.  And  this  conclusion,  upon 
its  face,  is  absurd. 

Apparent  exceptions  to  the  law  of  capital  we  have 
here  suggested  will  be  explained  when  we  examine 
into  the  nature  of  their  causes.  In  the  United  States 
of  America,  admittedly  the  most  prosperous  commu- 
nity in  the  world,  there  is  least  actual  government 
use  of  capital  for  purposes  of  the  actual  creation  of 
wealth.  If  the  law  we  have  suggested  be  true,  there 
is  here  a  paradox.  But  when  the  total  sum  of  capital 
used  by  government  in  America  is  compared  with 
that  of  other  groups,  it  will  be  found  to  be  propor- 
tionally greater.  We  must  include  in  this  category 
all  grants  of  land  for  railroad  and  shipping  purposes, 
and  all  subsidies,  and  we  must  fix  their  quantity  at 
present  values  rather  than  at  former  values.  We 
must  likewise  include  all  wealth  used  for  purposes  of 


324  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

education  and  for  protection  to  property  in  general. 
In  a  word,  we  must  include  all  government  wealth 
whatever  may  be  its  uses.  If  there  is  less  actual  pro- 
duction by  government  in  the  United  States  than  in 
some  less  prosperous  communities,  there  is  also  more 
direct  interference  by  government  with  the  mechanism 
of  production  and  trade. 

There  are  numerous  laws  framed  for  the  limitation 
of  private  capital  which  do  not  exist  in  less  progres- 
sive groups  in  which  government  is  more  active 
in  the  creative  function  of  capital.  American  moral 
ideas  in  the  matter  of  the  limitation  of  private  capi- 
tal are  far  in  advance  of  those  of  Europe.  And  as 
moral  force  is  the  efficient  cause  of  the  mutual  attrac- 
tion of  government  and  capital,  it  will  be  seen  that 
in  America  the  sum  of  the  movement  has  been  carried 
farther  than  in  Europe,  although,  in  the  latter,  govern- 
ment may  be  in  actual  contact  with  capital  in  many 
ways  not  observed  in  the  former.  Again,  the  military 
system  of  Europe  is  facilitated  by  government  capital, 
and  this  would  cause  an  acceleration  of  the  motion  in 
those  particular  industries  useful  for  military  purposes, 
but  not  in  others.  The  degree  of  proximity  between 
government  and  capital  is  therefore  lower  in  Europe 
than  in  America.  In  the  former  the  contact  extends 
to  few  industries  and  those  closely  associated  with  the 
military  needs  of  the  group.  In  the  latter,  the  pro- 
cess of  proximation  is  observed  to  affect  industries  of 
almost  every  kind  in  no  way  associated  with  military 
needs.  In  other  words,  public  capitalization  in  Europe 
is  almost  wholly  of  a  military  kind ;  whereas  in 
America  public  control  of  capitalization  is  wholly  of 
an  industrial  kind.  The  first  process  finds  its  equilib- 


vtii  SOCIAL  KINETICS  CONTINUED  32$ 

rium  quickly,  and  the  general  proximation  proceeds 
more  slowly  with  the  increasingly  even  division  of 
wealth.  The  second  process  —  that  observed  in 
America  —  finds  its  equilibrium  more  slowly  than  the 
first,  while  the  general  proximation  is  more  rapid. 

But  if  we  conceive  that  in  the  latter  process  the 
equilibrium  be  once  reached  in  any  particular  branch 
of  industry,  we  can  readily  conceive  how  it  must  be 
quickly  reached  in  all.  For  the  purpose  of  govern- 
ment contact  with  capital  in  America  is  not  military, 
as  in  Europe,  but  industrial.  It  has  no  such  limita- 
tion, therefore,  as  we  observe  in  European  groups. 
The  military  well-being  of  the  group  is  not  sought  in 
any  manner  when  government  is  used  in  America  to 
place  bounds  upon  the  desires  of  capitalists  for  vast 
possessions.  The  only  aim  in  such  action  is  the 
prosperity  and  liberty  of  the  masses.  Any  attempt 
of  government  to  contract  that  liberty,  by  taxation 
for  military  purposes,  is  vigorously  reprobated  by  the 
common  moral  sense  ;  whereas  all  attempts  to  expand 
it  receive  the  highest  popular  approval.  Thus  it  is 
that  military  proposals  are  little  understood  and 
regarded  with  small  attention  in  America,  whereas 
proposals  to  encourage  industry  receive  prime  con- 
sideration and  careful  scrutiny.  The  statesman  with 
an  economic  programme  is  listened  to  attentively. 
The  statesman  with  a  programme  in  which  the 
economic  and  political  relations  are  not  clearly  per- 
ceived, receives  very  scant  respect. 

Something  of  a  reverse  order  is  observed  in 
Europe ;  and  if  these  facts  have  any  significance 
whatever,  they  would  seem  to  indicate  that,  in 
America,  the  true  relations  of  government  to  capital 


326  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

are  more  generally  and  more  clearly  apprehended 
than  in  Europe,  and  that  government  and  capital 
in  America  have  drawn  more  closely  together  than 
in  many  of  the  other  democratic  states  of  civili- 
zation. 

The  conception  that  public  ownership  of  capital 
is  to  be  produced  by  the  gradual  centralization  of 
wealth  in  a  few  hands  would  thus  appear  to  be  a 
false  one.  It  is  based  upon  the  highly  erroneous 
idea  that  as  men  grow  poorer,  their  capacity  for  the 
use  of  wealth  increases.  The  error  is  due  to  a  funda- 
mental misconception  of  the  nature  of  growth  of  any 
kind.  It  is  only  one  of  the  innumerable  misconcep- 
tions of  metaphysicians  in  general,  and  these  are  all 
occasioned  by  a  superficial  examination  of  causes.  A 
theory  which  holds  that  expropriation  of  the  many 
by  the  few  will,  in  the  end,  cause  an  abolition  of 
private  capital,  is  a  theory  self-contradictory  at  its 
root.  We  know  that  the  capacity  for  the  use  of 
wealth  progresses  with  increase  of  possessions.  The 
proverb  of  the  beggar  on  horseback  is  only  the 
commonplace  perception  of  a  homely  truth.  The  ap- 
parent desire  of  the  beggar  for  wealth  he  is  incapable 
of  using  is  a  delusion  which  vanishes  the  moment 
that  wealth,  beyond  his  capacity  for  use,  is  placed  in 
his  hands.  We  can  imagine  him  very  rapidly  acquir- 
ing increased  capacity  as  his  possessions  become 
enlarged.  But  we  cannot  imagine  an  unlimited  ca- 
pacity as  being  instantly  produced,  unless  we  admit 
into  the  theory  the  element  of  the  miraculous. 

Political  democracy  is  an  effect,  not  a  cause,  of 
economic  progress.  We  must  not  expect  to  find  a 
community  in  which  the  diffusion  of  political  power 


vni  SOCIAL  KINETICS  CONTINUED  327 

can  be  far  in  excess  of  the  diffusion  of  economic 
power.  As  the  power  of  government  and  the  power 
of  capital  are  convertible  terms,  we  should  not  expect 
to  find  a  community  in  which  capital  is  centred  in 
a  few  hands  and  political  power  diffused  among  the 
many.  In  such  a  community  the  right  of  the  few 
to  expropriate  wealth  from  the  masses  would  be 
organic,  and  the  moral  element  of  progress,  which, 
as  we  have  seen,  is  essential,  would  be  absent.  The 
social  progress  through  which  such  a  group  would 
pass  would  tend  to  produce  ever  lower  and  lower 
levels,  above  and  below  which  wages  would  tend  to 
rise  and  fall.  The  producing  power  of  capital  would 
shift  to  lower  and  lower  norms.  The  aggregate 
wealth  would  decrease,  and  with  this  decrease  would 
go  hand  in  hand  a  progressive  decrease  of  popula- 
tion. Internal  military  power  would  wax,  and  military 
power  for  external  defence  would  wane.  Economic, 
moral,  aesthetic,  and  intellectual  capacity  would  decline 
together.  With  this  action  of  expropriation  going 
forward,  we  can  readily  conceive  how  a  highly  civil- 
ized state  could  be  reduced  to  the  level  of  medi- 
aeval feudalism ;  but  we  cannot  conceive  that  the 
action  would  terminate  suddenly  in  the  opposite 
effect. 

Sudden  revolutions,  in  which  political  power  is 
struck  down  from  a  king  or  a  class,  are  only  violent 
readjustments  of  the  political  to  the  economic  state 
of  the  group.  If  highly  false  political  ideas  arise  in 
the  process,  there  must  follow  new  readjustments 
until  the  equilibrium  is  restored.  If  public  capitaliza- 
tion be  attempted,  as  in  the  French  revolution 
conspicuously,  the  attempt  must  fail,  because  the 


328  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

instruments  of  capitalization  have  not  been  developed 
to  a  degree  which  admits  of  easy  transfer,  and 
because  the  true  relations  of  government  to  capital 
are  not  fully  perceived.  The  abortive  change  indi- 
cates that  they  are  partially  perceived  by  a  few.  But 
the  few  who  perceive  them  are  encountered  by  the 
moral  sense  of  the  many,  to  whom  ideas  of  private 
capitalization  are  highly  grateful.  And  if  these  ideas 
are  grateful,  it  is  because  the  private  use  of  capital 
has  not  risen  to  that  high  degree  which  arouses  a 
moral  sense  favorable  to  a  restriction  of  the  private 
capitalistic  function. 

We  may  safely  say,  then,  that  the  shifting  of  moral 
standards  to  progressively  high  levels  brings  about 
the  approach  of  government  to  capital.  Action  is 
taken,  and  can  be  taken,  only  when  the  moral  force 
in  a  community  gathers  sufficient  strength  to  over- 
flow upon  the  boundaries  of  the  freedom  of  capitalists, 
and  to  cause  that  freedom  to  contract.  When  this 
overflow  takes  place  the  true  relations  between  gov- 
ernment and  capital  are  beginning  to  be  perceived. 
The  capitalistic  activities  of  government  at  once 
begin  to  expand  in  a  manner  at  once  approved  by 
the  common  ideas  of  right  and  wrong.  Such  activi- 
ties had  been  condemned  yesterday  as  highly  hurtful 
to  the  economic  liberties  of  the  many.  To-day  they 
are  approved  by  all  except  those  with  whose  freedom 
they  interfere.  But  the  desire  of  the  few  is  conceived 
by  the  many  to  be  hurtful  to  the  happiness  of  the 
many,  and  is  condemned  by  the  many  as  the  quintes- 
sentiality  of  wrong.  And  as  the  wealth  of  the  many 
is  greater  than  the  wealth  of  the  few,  the  force  of 
the  many  preponderates. 


vni  SOCIAL  KINETICS   CONTINUED  329 

If,  now,  there  is  no  way  but  one  open  for  the  flow 
of  this  preponderance  of  force,  it  must  flow  in  the 
direction  so  conceived.  That  direction,  as  we  have 
every  reason  to  know  from  the  data  before  us,  is 
toward  the  actiial  contact  of  government  with  capital 
for  true  capitalistic  purposes.  These  are  the  crea- 
tion and  distribution  of  wealth.  The  motion  which 
has  borne  society  forward  has  carried  it  toward  an 
equal  division  of  the  things  created  between  the 
total  number  of  individuals  creating  them.  This  is 
the  purpose  at  which  alone  can  be  brought  to  an  end 
the  forward  flow  of  social  forces.  And  as  govern- 
ment use  of  capital  is  the  only  conceivable  method 
by  which  the  flow  of  social  forces  can  reach  that  end, 
that  is  the  method  which  must  be  used.  It  is  the 
only  method  which  shall  completely  satisfy  the 
rapidly  growing  increment  of  moral  capacity.  It  is 
the  one  method  which  the  actual  development  of  the 
instruments  of  capital  makes  necessary.  It  is  the 
method  which  implies  the  clearest  perceptions  of 
the  true  relations  of  government  to  capital ;  and  it 
is  the  method  used  by  the  one  species  of  social 
organism,  other  than  human,  that  has  found  a  perfect 
equilibrium  of  the  basic  forces  and  functions  of  life, 
when  these  forces  unite  in  a  social  compound. 

We  began  our  inquiry  into  the  direction  of  kinetic 
social  force  by  the  assumption  that  the  conception 
of  wealth,  and  its  uses,  would  be  found  to  be  our  most 
efficient  instrument  of  investigation.  And  by  cling- 
ing to  that  method  we  have  arrived  at  the  conclu- 
sion above  set  forth.  Method  and  instrument  would 
be  alike  vitiated  were  it  possible  to  bring  forward  a 
single  social  fact  which  would  prove  to  be  contradic- 


33O  THE   LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL   MOTION         CHAP,  vm 

tory  to  the  hypothesis.  But  we  think  that  a  more 
detailed  examination  into  the  nature  of  social  motion 
will  serve  to  restrict  the  number  of  spheres  in  which 
such  contradictory  facts  may  be  found ;  and  into 
that  inquiry  we  may  now  proceed  to  enter. 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE    LAW    OF    CAPITALIZATION 

IN  developing  the  theory  of  social  life  which  is 
offered  here  for  the  consideration  of  thinking  men, 
we  have  no  desire  whatever  to  assume  the  attitude  of 
a  critic.  We  believe  that  the  critical  method  is  per- 
fectly useless  when  the  thing  desired  is  the  demon- 
stration of  natural  knowledge. 

Criticism  is  useful  enough  for  the  destruction  of 
old  errors.  Its  function  consists  only  in  clearing  the 
ground  for  the  construction  of  safe  and  demonstra- 
ble truths.  But  no  sum  of  criticism,  taken  by  itself, 
can  ever  result  in  the  unfolding  of  a  new  law  of 
nature.  To  make  this  clear  let  us  consider  one  con- 
spicuous example.  There  was  once  a  very  respecta- 
ble theory  of  planetary  motion,  originated  by  Rene 
Descartes,  accounting  for  the  facts  of  the  solar  system 
by  assuming  the  existence  of  a  kind  of  universal 
fluid,  in  which  all  the  planets  swam  as  a  light  body 
is  buoyed  up  upon  water.  This  fluid,  Descartes  held, 
swirled  around  the  sun,  carrying  the  planets  with  it 
in  so  many  vortices.  The  theory  was  pretty  and 
alluring,  and  won  for  itself  numerous  and  distin- 
guished advocates.  But  it  had  not  been  demon- 
strated, and  its  author  had  attempted  no  proof  that 
it  was  true. 

331 


332  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

It  is  plain,  now,  that  if  scientific  criticism  have  any 
raison  d'etre  at  all,  its  function  would  apply  to  this 
theory  of  Descartes.  Let  us  say  that  a  critic  of  the 
Cartesian  theory  had  called  attention  to  the  fact  that 
a  spherical  vortex  was  mechanically  inconceivable 
and  impossible,  and  we  have  an  ideal  illustration  of 
the  function  of  criticism.  The  vortical  theory  would 
have  been  proven  false,  but  the  critic  would  not  have 
replaced  it  with  anything  more  serviceable. 

Newton,  seeking  to  explain  the  same  facts  that 
had  engaged  the  attention  of  Descartes,  proceeded 
without  any  regard  to  the  Cartesian  principle.  He 
did  not  criticise  existing  theories,  but  sought  to  account 
for  existing  facts  by  the  assumption  of  a  new  pos- 
tulate, and  by  its  subsequent  demonstration.  His 
method  was  purely  constructive,  and  with  his  demon- 
stration all  other  theories  of  planetary  motion  fell  to 
pieces. 

We  have  touched  upon  these  somewhat  remote 
matters  to  illustrate  our  own  position  in  the  grounds 
of  social  science.  Therefore  it  does  not  become  us 
here  to  offer  any  criticism  of  the  methods  of  political 
science  beyond  stating  the  fact  that  political  science, 
in  keeping  too  narrowly  within  its  self-set  bounda- 
ries, has  failed  in  a  thorough  understanding  of  its 
own  subject-matter.  Writers  who  have  studied  the 
science  of  government  have  left  the  science  of 
economics  alone,  and  in  doing  so  have  thwarted 
their  own  purposes.  So  far  as  the  author  of  this 
book  is  aware,  the  only  writer  who  has  made  a  philo- 
sophical attempt  to  understand  the  true  relations  of 
government  to  capital  is  John  B.  Clark,  the  distin- 
guished American  economist.  Professor  Clark  has 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  333 

gone  farther  than  most  of  his  kind  in  his  conceptions 
of  the  part  played  by  government  in  the  production 
of  wealth.  To  assert  that  the  monarch,  the  execu- 
tive, the  legislator,  the  judge,  the  soldier,  are,  indi- 
rectly, it  may  be  explained,  actively  engaged  in  the 
business  of  creating  wealth  is,  it  would  seem  to  us, 
to  assert  a  self-evident  truth,  needing  no  demonstra- 
tion of  any  kind. 

Yet,  be  it  said,  some  of  Professor  Clark's  critics  — 
economists  themselves,  by  the  way  —  do  not  seem  to 
be  able  to  comprehend  the  force  of  his  suggestion. 
That  fact  is  probably  due  to  their  fear  that  by 
enlarging  the  conceptions  of  their  own  science  they 
might  trench  upon  their  friends,  the  political  scien- 
tists, and  rob  them  of  some  of  their  hard-earned 
glory.  Yet  we  fail  to  see  why  any  considerations  of 
this  kind  should  deter  economists  from  taking  their 
proper  place  as  expositors  of  social  theory.  If  the 
existence  of  government  is  dependent  upon  the  facts 
with  which  the  science  of  political  economy  has  to 
do,  we  see  no  reason  why  those  who  are  studying 
the  one  order  of  things  should  ignore  the  existence 
of  the  other.  On  the  contrary,  we  do  not  see  how 
the  two  orders  can  be  considered  apart.  The  truth 
is  that  questions  of  government  are  forcing  them- 
selves on  the  minds  of  political  economists.  The 
two  sciences  are  rapidly  becoming  involved,  one  with 
the  other,  as  it  is  discovered  slowly  that  the  two 
orders  of  facts  are  inseparably  bound  together  and 
have  been  so  from  the  beginning. 

When,  in  the  preceding  chapter,  we  stated  that  the 
function  of  government  is  essentially  capitalistic,  we 
had  no  more  in  view  than  the  truths  we  have  just 


334  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

hinted  at.  But  much  remains  to  be  said.  The 
inquiry  will  carry  us  far  beyond  the  suggestion  of 
Professor  Clark,  and  will  enable  us  to  understand 
upon  what  social  foundations  his  profound  sugges- 
tion rests. 

We  have  said,  in  effect,  that  political  power 
springs  from  the  possession  of  capital.  To  live  and 
to  propagate,  men  must  secure  wealth  in  some  way. 
In  a  group  residing  upon  a  fixed  locality,  the  prime 
necessity  is  the  production  of  things  needed  for  the 
sustentation  of  life ;  and  the  secondary  necessity  is 
the  division  of  the  things  among  those  who  create 
them.  In  the  doing  of  this,  law  and  order  arise 
among  men,  and  out  of  law  and  order  emerges  the 
face  of  government,  by  which  law  and  order  are 
strengthened  and  preserved. 

But  who  and  what  are  those  in  whom  inheres  the 
power  of  governing  ?  What  is  political  power  ?  How 
does  it  come  to  be  associated  with  certain  individuals, 
certain  classes  of  individuals,  and  certain  groups  of 
these  classes  ?  What  are  the  conditions  of  its  exist- 
ence, and  what  are  the  laws  by  which  it  passes  from 
one  man  to  another,  from  one  class  of  men  to  another 
class,  from  one  system  of  government  to  another 
system,  through  the  flux  of  political  history  from  age 
to  age  ? 

Let  us  ask  another  question,  the  answer  to  which 
will  give  us  the  key  to  the  queries  set  forth  above. 
How  do  men  acquire  political  power?  To  answer 
this  question  we  must  go  back  to  the  beginnings  of 
organized  society.  The  brute  man  of  long  ago  is  at 
best  an  ugly  being  in  his  desires  and  his  mode  of 
satisfying  them.  Yet  we  are  perforce  required  to 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  335 

admit  that  the  brute  man  himself  is  our  ancestor,  and 
that  his  institutions  are  our  institutions,  vastly  altered 
in  character,  it  is  true,  yet  just  as  truly  built  upon  the 
old  foundations. 

Brute  strength,  in  a  savage  community,  is  the 
indisputable  basis  of  sovereignty.  The  strong  man 
becomes  the  ruler.  Now,  what  does  the  strong  man 
take  to  himself  ?  Of  a  surety  he  takes  to  himself  the 
things  which  give  ease  and  comfort  to  their  pos- 
sessors. But  what  are  these  things  ?  In  a  savage 
state  they  are  the  crude  products  of  crude  labor.  In 
more  civilized  groups,  they  are  the  more  refined  prod- 
ucts of  a  labor  that  is  skilled.  In  a  rapidly  growing 
group,  they  are  the  products  of  labor,  the  land  itself, 
and  the  bodies  of  living  men  who  are  used  as  instru- 
ments for  the  creation  of  wealth  —  slaves, 

The  individuals  who  have  acquired  these  things  by 
brute  strength  will  remain  the  rulers  of  the  group  as 
long  as  possession  is  insured.  But  it  should  be  mani- 
fest that  he  who  can  safeguard  himself  in  the  posses- 
sion of  the  things  used  in  the  creation  of  wealth  will, 
by  the  very  fact  of  possession,  dominate  the  conduct 
of  those  whose  lives  depend  upon  the  new  wealth 
created.  Power  which  can  be  exercised  over  the 
lives  of  others,  as  well  as  over  their  conduct ;  and 
power  which  can  enforce  the  will  of  those  who  pos- 
sess it  upon  the  wills  of  the  remaining  members  of 
the  group,  is  political  power  if  that  term  has  any 
meaning  whatsoever. 

But  power  of  this  kind  can  take  no  form  so  full  of 
force,  so  mighty  and  so  manifold  in  its  possible  appli- 
cations, as  the  form  it  assumes  when  the  possessor  of 
it  owns  the  very  instruments  upon  the  use  of  which 


336  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

the  life  of  every  individual  depends.  Capital  is  only 
another  name  for  these  instruments.  And  the  indi- 
viduals who  control  capital — control  it  absolutely 
and  practically  —  are  the  only  individuals  upon  whom 
the  power  of  sovereignty  rests.  The  conclusion  is 
sweeping.  Given  to  one  man,  or  to  many  men,  the 
absolute  and  free  control  of  all  the  capital  in  any 
group,  and  these  individuals  are  the  rulers  of  the 
group,  free  to  create  any  instrument  of  force  they 
please,  and  to  impose  their  wills  upon  the  conduct  of 
all  the  others.  This,  then,  is  political  power ;  and  we 
have  just  seen  how  it  originates. 

Now  let  us  suppose  that  this  possession  of  capital 
is  not  a  rigid  condition;  that  capital  is  capable  of 
being  shifted  about  from  one  man  to  another ;  that 
the  individual  who  has  capital  to-day  may  be  without 
it  to-morrow.  Let  us  suppose,  rather,  that  capital  has 
a  tendency  to  flow  down  from  the  possession  of  those 
who  rule  into  the  possession  of  those  who  are  ruled. 
What  would  follow  ?  Let  us  first  inquire  how  this 
diffusion  of  capital  could  be  brought  about. 

Chief  among  the  kinds  of  wealth  which  place 
power  in  the  hands  of  the  rulers  will  be  that  thing 
which  is  used  as  money.  The  larger  the  quantity  of 
money  possessed  by  the  rulers,  the  stronger  will  be 
their  ruling  power,  for  by  money  they  can  secure 
and  enlarge  the  instruments  of  force  whereby  they 
coerce  the  remaining  members  of  the  community. 
But,  as  we  have  seen,  money  is  the  most  desirable 
form  of  capital  in  all  but  the  most  advanced  present- 
day  civilizations.  The  rulers  of  a  community,  then, 
are  those  who  possess  the  capital  of  the  community ; 
and  of  this  capital,  money  is  the  principal  instru- 


ix  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  337 

ment.  But  most  of  the  money  of  a  community  will 
always  be  in  the  hands  of  the  men  who  own  the 
real  creative  capital ;  or,  at  least,  the  money  will  flow 
in  a  steady  stream  through  the  hands  of  these  capi- 
talists into  those  of  the  laborer,  and  back  again  into 
the  hands  of  the  capitalists.  But  in  the  hands  of 
the  laborer,  money  is  no  longer  productive  of  political 
power,  for  the  reason  that  labor  uses  all  but  a  small 
part  of  the  money  it  receives  for  consumption  pur- 
poses. Laborers,  however,  who  save  out  a  part  of 
their  money  for  future  capital,  become  politically 
powerful  as  soon  as  the  saved-up  money  is  converted 
into  actual  instruments  of  creation.  Thus  it  would 
seem  clear  that  the  political  power  of  a  people  is 
really  their  capital. 

If  this  be  true,  —  and  we  do  not  see  how  it  can 
be  questioned,  —  then  we  can  state  at  least  one  term 
of  our  desired  law  as  follows :  — 

The  diffusion  of  political  power  is  proportional  to 
the  diffusion  of  capital. 

This  is  a  theorem  the  demonstration  of  which,  we 
believe,  has  been  given  in  the  preceding  paragraphs. 
But  true  as  this  law  may  be,  it  is  not  complete,  and 
it  does  not  satisfy  the  requirements  of  a  synthesis  of 
social  forces.  For  there  is  yet  left  out  of  account  a 
most  important  element  of  social  progress,  and  that 
is  the  quantity  of  the  wealth  used  and  in  process  of 
creation  by  any  political  group  we  may  desire  to  con- 
sider. What  is  the  relation  of  political  power  to  the 
quantity  of  wealth  possessed  by  the  society  ? 

The  relation  here  will  be  found,  upon  examination, 
to  be  more  complex  than  is  the  diffusion -relation  of 
capital  and  political  power.  We  believe  that  the 


338  THE   LEVEL   OF   SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

variation  in  political  power  and  in  the  quantity  of 
wealth  will  be  found  to  be  of  an  inverse  order.  But 
an  important  distinction  must  not  be  forgotten  here. 
It  is  that  between  capital  and  wealth.  The  diffusion 
of  wealth  multiplies  the  number  of  those  who  are 
powerful  politically,  and  why  ?  Because  it  enables 
increasingly  large  numbers  of  men  to  become  capi- 
talists. But  if  diffusion  of  wealth  is  accompanied 
by  diffusion  of  political  power,  it  will  be  seen  that 
the  quantity  of  wealth  will  have  an  important  bearing 
on  the  form  of  the  government  if  the  diffusion  grows 
as  the  quantity  grows ;  or,  to  state  the  proposition  in 
more  general  terms,  if  the  diffusion  and  quantity  are 
proportional  to  each  other.  Now  this  latter  law  is 
precisely  the  truth  in  all  progressive  societies.  But 
we  will  not  consider  this  fact  at  present.  We  desire 
to  establish,  first,  the  effect  of  the  quantity  of  wealth 
upon  the  relations  which  exist  between  the  rulers  and 
the  capital  of  the  society.  Any  particular  type  of 
society  will  do  for  illustration,  for  the  law  must  be 
found  to  apply  to  all  conceivable  societies  in  which 
capital  exists  —  and  this  whether  the  society  be 
human  or  not. 

Let  us  take  for  example  a  feudal  state.  The  capi- 
tal there  —  and  by  capital  in  a  feudal  state  we  mean 
land  and  agricultural  instruments  —  is  in  the  hands 
of  the  lords.  Now  it  is  evident  that  product  grows 
faster  than  capital.  And  if  we  suppose  that  by 
means  of  excellent  crops,  increased  labor  efficiency, 
and  improvements  in  methods  of  agriculture,  the 
general  product  of  such  a  society  is  largely  increased, 
it  is  plain  that  the  sum  of  the  capital  in  existence 
will  be  smaller  as  compared  with  the  total  wealth  than 


IX  THE   LAW   OF  CAPITALIZATION  339 

it  was  before.  Therefore,  as  the  quantity  of  wealth  — 
not  capital,  be  it  remembered,  but  all  kinds  of  wealth, 
capital  included  —  increases,  the  sum  of  capital  itself 
grows  comparatively  less.  This  is  a  self-evident 
truth  needing  no  more  demonstration  than  the  state- 
ment of  it.  And  if  it  be  true  of  a  feudal  society,  it 
must  be  true  of  all  societies  in  which  capital  exists. 
Now  as  capital  power  is  the  equivalent  of  political 
power,  it  is  plain  from  the  above  that  as  the  quantity 
of  general  wealth  increases,  the  quantity  of  capital  in 
the  hands  of  the  rulers  grows  comparatively  small. 
Of  course  it  does  not  grow  absolutely  small.  It 
grows  absolutely  large.  But  compared  with  the 
quantity  of  wealth  in  general,  the  quantity  of  capital 
is  smaller.  We  may  therefore  state  the  second  term 
of  our  generalization  as  follows  :  — 

The  quantity  of  capital  grows  relatively  smaller  as 
the  absolute  quantity  of  wealth  increases, 

We  are  now  approaching  a  formula  in  which  may 
be  expressed  those  very  complex  relations  between 
the  diffusion  and  the  quantity  of  wealth,  the  quantity 
of  capital,  and  the  method  of  the  government.  Be- 
fore stating  the  formula,  however,  it  will  be  necessary 
to  introduce  it  with  a  few  words  of  definition.  We 
have  thought  it  best  to  set  out  these  definitions  in 
numbered  paragraphs  in  order  that  the  reader  may 
turn  to  them  when  he  is  following  us  in  the  reason- 
ing we  will  use  in  the  deduction  which  is  to  come  :  — 

1 .  Wealth  is  the  appropriated  and  exchangeable  part 

of  a  social  environment. 

2.  Capital  is  that  part  of  wealth  used  in  the  process 

of  making  new  wealth,  or  in  the  circulation  of 
product. 


340  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

3.  Political  power  is  the  ability  of  certain  members 

of  a  society  physically  to  force  the  remaining 
members  to  do  their  will. 

4.  Government  is  the  sum  of  the  force  usable  by  the 

rulers  and  applied  to  the  governed  by  the  instru- 
ment of  force  created  for  the  purpose. 
With  these  definitions  in  mind  we  can  now  formu- 
late  the    law   of    social    progress   in   the   following 
terms :  — 

Government  unites  with  capital  over  areas  which 
vary  inversely  as  to  the  quantity  of  wealth  and 
proportionally  as  to  its  diffusion, 

For  this  generalization  we  can  suggest  no  better 
term  than  the  law  of  capitalization.  The  terms  used 
in  our  formula  are  as  little  fanciful  as  any  we  can 
ourselves  conceive.  It  may  be  truly  said,  without 
rhetorical  conceit,  that  government  actually  unites 
with  capital  when  government  assumes  the  proper 
function  of  capital ;  that  is,  when  government  itself 
creates  and  sells  the  products  of  industry.  There  is 
positive  union  between  a  man's  body,  his  raiment,  and 
the  things  he  uses  in  his  daily  life.  And  property 
right  to  things  remote  from  his  person  is  potential 
union  or  unity. 

A  learned  and  sympathetic  critic  who  is  familiar 
with  the  contents  of  this  volume  has  suggested  that 
the  law  of  capitalization  here  formulated  might  be 
made  the  subject  of  a  mathematical  demonstration. 
The  suggestion  was  not  new  to  the  author.  He  had 
carefully  considered  the  possibility  of  mathematical 
demonstration  and  was  compelled,  upon  reflection,  to 
abandon  it.  The  formula  is  so  suggestive  as  to  be 
alluring  to  the  mathematical  mind.  But  the  element 


ix  THE  LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  341 

of  exact  quantity  is  entirely  lacking,  and  any  attempt 
at  mathematical  demonstration  could  be  no  more  than 
a  pleasing  conceit,  much  the  same  as  the  mathematics 
used  by  biologists  to  demonstrate  the  law  of  natural 
selection.  These  biologists  demonstrate  nothing. 
We  do  not  look  to  them  but  to  Darwin  for  the  proof 
of  his  law.  Newton's  quantities  were  something 
very  different  from  those  of  Darwin  and  from  our 
own.  Quantities  of  social  force,  like  quantities  of 
vital  force,  may  be  reducible  to  mathematical  for- 
mulae, but  such  formulas  must  be  based  upon  methods 
of  measurement  which  do  not  now  exist.  The  opin- 
ion of  the  author  may  be  worth  nothing  in  this  re- 
spect. But  until  he  can  see  his  way  clear  to  a 
method  by  which  nervous  force  can  be  rigidly  meas- 
ured as  we  now  measure  the  weight  of  material 
bodies ;  and  until  he  is  brought  to  see  that  social 
motion  can  be  calculated  as  we  calculate  the  transla- 
tion of  bodies  through  space,  he  must  perforce  be 
content  with  the  method  of  Darwin,  whose  law,  while 
very  clear  and  highly  susceptible  of  proof,  requires 
no  mathematical  method  of  exposition. 

One  word  more  is  needed  before  proceeding  with 
our  deduction.  The  substance  of  a  government  may 
be  changed  without  a  change  in  its  form.  Thus  if 
the  capital  in  a  feudal  state  be  taken  from  the  lords 
and  evenly  divided  among  all  the  people,  the  form  of 
government  will  not  have  been  essentially  changed. 
The  number  of  the  rulers  will  have  increased,  but 
that  is  all.  The  lords  were  very  nearly  equal,  at 
least  in  political  potentiality,  if  not  in  actual  power, 
and  the  serf  was  only  a  part  of  the  capital  which  the 
lords  controlled.  The  same  is  true  of  a  slave-system. 


342  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

Greece  was  a  democracy,  and  if  Greece  had  liberated  its 
slaves  and  enfranchised  them,  it  would  still  have  been 
a  democracy,  but  a  democracy  without  slaves.  When 
feudal  power  is  merged  into  a  monarchy,  the  power 
of  the  lords  is  curtailed  by  the  power  of  the  crown ; 
and  when  the  power'of  the  crown  is  curtailed  by  the 
people,  the  power  of  the  lords  is  curtailed  with  it. 
But  monarchy  is  only  a  step  from  feudalism  toward 
democracy,  and  in  all  modern  progressive  groups  living 
under  monarchy,  the  crown  is  the  symbol  of  the  people. 

If  we  now  seek  to  apply  this  law  of  capitalization 
to  the  facts  observed  everywhere  in  social  progress 
and  decay,  we  shall  find  these  facts  readily  taking 
their  places  in  the  sequences  implied  in  the  terms  of 
the  generalization.  When  we  speak  of  government 
"  uniting  with  capital,"  or  "  extending  to  capital,"  we 
mean  simply  that  the  persons  making  up  the  mechan- 
ism of  government  exercise  right  of  ownership  by 
actually  using  the  capital,  or  by  controlling  the 
actions  of  others  who  use  it.  When  we  speak 
of  "  areas  "  of  capital,  we  mean  those  quantities  of 
capital  which  are  the  objects  of  this  right  to  exclu- 
sive use  or  control. 

It  will  be  observed  that  in  all  communities  capital 
is  in  the  possession  of  the  persons  who  rule  the  realm. 
This  is  true  either  practically  or  theoretically.  In  a 
feudal  state  the  lords  own  the  wealth,  and,  in  a  way, 
the  persons  of  the  producers.  In  states  in  which 
slavery  is  practised,  the  governing  classes  actually 
own  the  bodies  of  the  governed.  When  feudal  power 
unites  in  a  royal  or  imperial  power,  unlimited  by  con- 
stitution, the  monarch  owns,  theoretically  at  least, 
the  entire  wealth  and  the  persons  of  the  community. 


IX  THE   LAW  OF   CAPITALIZATION  343 

Let  us  inquire,  with  these  facts  in  mind,  how  capital 
and  government  act  when  considered  in  the  light  of 
the  first  equation  of  the  law  of  capitalization  —  that 
is,  that  government  unites  with  capital  over  areas 
which  vary  inversely  as  to  the  quantity  of  wealth. 

To  do  this  we  will  imagine  a  state  in  which  the  rul- 
ing power  remains  fixed  to  a  specific  number  or  class 
of  individuals,  while  the  quantity  of  wealth  is  vari- 
able. That  is  to  say,  a  community  in  which  govern- 
ment is  unchanging  while  the  total  quantity  of  wealth 
increases  or  diminishes.  In  such  community,  as  in 
all  others,  capital,  being  the  most  desirable  form  of 
wealth,  would  be  largely  in  the  possession,  or  under 
the  control,  of  the  ruling  class.  Now  if  the  quantity 
of  wealth  were  supposed  to  decrease,  it  is  manifest 
that  the  area  of  capital  over  which  the  ruling  class,  or 
government,  would  have  control,  would  be  larger,  in 
comparison  with  the  total  sum  of  capital,  than  it  was 
before  the  decrease  came  about.  If  the  decrease  of 
wealth  were  progressive,  we  can  imagine  that  the 
time  would  come  when  all  the  capital  would  be  in 
the  possession  of  the  government,  and  there  would  be 
no  private  capitalists  whatever. 

This  condition  of  things  is  very  closely  approached 
i»  a  feudal  state,  in  which  capital,  being  almost  ex- 
clusively composed  of  land  and  agricultural  imple- 
ments, is  owned  exclusively,  or  nearly  so,  by  the 
lords.  The  rights  of  the  lords  would  lie  in  the  land, 
and  as  the  lords  are  the  government,  and  the  land  is 
the  capital,  the  government  would  be  united  with 
capital  over  its  entire  area,  or  nearly  so.  This  area, 
it  is  clear,  would  be  conterminous  with  all  but  an 
insignificant  part  of  the  capital  in  existence. 


344  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

If  we  now  conceive  that  the  quantity  of  wealth  be 
increased,  we  will  find  that  the  areas  of  capital  over 
which  government  extends  will  contract  as  compared 
with  the  entire  quantity  of  capital,  although  the  quan- 
tity over  which  the  government  extends  be  very  much 
enlarged,  absolutely.  That  is  to  say,  government 
capital  may  actually  increase,  but  its  area,  as  com- 
pared with  that  of  the  total  capital,  will  be  diminished 
as  the  quantity  of  wealth  would  grow.  For  the  land- 
owners, who  are  the  rulers,  would  find  that  their 
wealth  would  be  increased  by  the  free  use  of  capital 
other  than  land,  by  others  than  landowners.  They 
would  find  that  as  capital,  other  than  their  own,  in- 
creased in  quantity,  their  own  capital,  which  would 
be  land,  would  rise  in  value.  This  would  be  true 
because  land  would  be  most  highly  useful  as  an  in- 
strument for  the  creation  of  new  wealth.  But  as 
every  new  addition  to  the  quantity  of  wealth  would 
imply  larger  quantities  of  wealth  for  the  landowner, 
it  is  clear  that  it  would  be  to  the  interest  of  the  land- 
owner to  facilitate  the  widest  possible  liberty  for 
capital  in  other  forms. 

But  as  this  liberty  for  the  use  of  capital,  other  than 
land,  could  only  result  in  the  progressive  increase  of 
wealth  of  all  kinds,  it  is  manifest  that  the  total  sum 
of  capital  would  soon  outstrip  that  of  the  land. 
This  would  result  in  the  diminution  of  the  quantity  of 
capital  in  the  hands  of  landowners,  as  compared  with 
the  whole  quantity  of  capital  in  the  hands  of  all. 
And  as  wealth  would  increase  in  quantity,  the  value 
of  land  would  constantly  diminish,  when  that  value 
would  be  compared  with  the  value  of  the  whole  quan- 
tity of  capital ;  while,  at  the  same  time,  the  absolute 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  345 

value  of  land  would  constantly  rise  to  higher  and 
higher  levels. 

So  it  is  seen  that,  so  long  as  government  remains 
fixed,  the  areas  of  capital  over  which  government 
extends  contract  with  expanding  wealth  and  expand 
with  diminishing  wealth.  But  while  all  this  is  per- 
fectly true,  in  theory,  we  never  find  this  state  of  things 
actually  existing  in  any  human  society.  Why  ?  Be- 
cause, in  fact,  government,  in  human  societies,  never 
remains  fixed,  and  can  never  remain  fixed,  so  long  as 
it  is  possible  to  disturb  it  by  the  force  described  in 
the  other  equation  of  the  law  of  capitalization ; 
namely,  the  progressive  diffusion,  or  the  reverse,  of 
the  entire  quantity  of  wealth. 

The  law  of  capitalization  is  seen  best  exemplified 
when  we  take  it  in  its  entirety,  and  of  course  the 
reader  will  quickly  understand  that  this  is  the  only 
way  in  which  we  can  rationally  and  usefully  consider 
it  and  test  it.  We  will  regard  it  as  a  completed  pro- 
cess in  another  place.  At  present  it  will  be  useful  to 
observe  it  at  work  in  human  societies  in  general.  That 
is,  we  will  consider  the  facts  as  they  actually  exist. 

In  all  progressive  societies  the  quantity  of  wealth 
constantly  increases,  while  the  diffusion  of  wealth 
constantly  rises  to  higher  degrees  of  expansion.  This 
process  is,  in  a  word,  social  progress.  We  should, 
therefore,  expect  to  find  that  in  progressive  groups 
the  areas  of  capital  over  which  government  extends  are 
ever  expanding  to  accommodate  themselves  to  the  pro- 
gressive increase  of  the  quantity  of  wealth.  We  should 
find,  in  the  richest  communities,  that  government 
use  or  control  unites  with  the  largest  areas  of  capital, 
either  actually  or  potentially.  But  we  should  remem- 


346  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

her,  too,  that  the  extent  of  these  surfaces  of  capital 
is  determined,  not  alone  by  the  quantity  of  wealth, 
but  by  its  diffusion.  So,  we  should  expect  to  find 
that  some  societies,  while  very  much  richer  than 
others,  absolutely,  are  less  strongly  characterized  by 
areas  of  government  capital,  owing  to  the  fact  that  in 
these  richer  societies  the  diffusion  of  wealth  is  lower 
in  degree  than  in  the  poorer  ones.  We  might  thus 
be  enabled  to  understand  the  fact  that  in  England 
government  unites  with  capital  over  smaller  areas 
than  in  New  Zealand,  where  the  absolute  quantity  of 
wealth  is  considerably  less.  But  if  England  be 
wealthier  than  its  colony,  its  wealth  is  less  generally 
diffused.  And  if  we  find  that,  in  New  Zealand,  gov- 
ernment unites  with  capital  in  areas  larger  than  in 
any  other  of  the  democratic  groups  of  the  civilized 
world,  it  would  seem  to  be  because  in  that  island  the 
average  citizen  is  comparatively  richer  than  in  any 
other  society  among  men. 

The  causes  which  produce  this  peculiar  readjustment 
of  government  to  capital  we  have  discussed  in  the 
chapters  which  have  been  written  thus  far.  We 
desire  in  this  chapter  especially  to  discuss  the  rapid 
development  of  capitalization  as  it  is  found  in  the 
United  States.  We  have  selected  the  United  States, 
first,  because  it  is  the  wealthiest  social  group  in  the 
world  ;  secondly,  because  of  the  peculiar  character  of 
its  capital ;  and,  thirdly,  because  there  is  a  promise  that 
the  United  States  will  quickly  develop  areas  of  govern- 
ment capital  of  comparatively  larger  extent  than  those 
of  New  Zealand,  or  its  wealthier  neighbor,  Australia. 

The  profusion  and  variety  of  the  wealth  of  the 
United  States  are  inviting  objects  of  inquiry,  while 


ix  THE   LAW   OF  CAPITALIZATION  347 

the  political  state  of  the  country  is  one  which  offers 
free  play  to  all  the  forces  which  interact  between 
government  and  capital.  The  community  is  perfectly 
isolated  from  all  external  influence.  It  is  not  only 
dissociated  from  all  over-government,  such  as  is 
incidental  to  colonies,  but  it  has  no  alliances  with 
foreign  nations  to  disturb  its  industrial  progress  by 
the  element  of  military  needs.  Its  contiguous  envi- 
ronment has  little  effect  upon  its  political  growth. 
Since  the  abolition  of  slavery,  the  country  has  been 
free  to  develop  its  capital  under  a  form  of  government 
which  gives  to  every  individual  citizen  an  equal  quantity 
of  political  power  and  a  potential  equality  of  thrift. 

How  very  effective  has  been  that  potentiality  of 
political  equality  will  be  seen  exemplified  when  we 
remember  that  Abraham  Lincoln,  a  president  greater 
in  every  respect  than  the  so-called  "father  of  his 
country,"  was  born  of  parents  at  the  lowest  end  of 
the  scale  among  the  whites,  and  that  he  was  entirely 
self-educated.  Of  the  eight  presidents  who  suc- 
ceeded him,  all  but  two  were  of  lowly  origin.  One 
had  been  a  tailor,  another  the  son  of  an  obscure 
merchant,  another  had  been  a  farm  hand,  another  a 
county  sheriff.  Of  the  presidents  who  preceded 
Lincoln  one  was  the  son  .of  an  Irish  immigrant,  a 
second  had  been  a  farm  laborer,  a  third  a  wool-carder, 
and  a  fourth  was  the  son  of  a  poor  farmer. 

The  potential  economic  equality  of  the  citizens  of 
the  United  States  has  been  a  matter  of  proverb  among 
civilized  people  ever  since  the  foundation  of  the 
republic.  The  uncultured  American  millionnaire  and 
his  wealth,  while  a  pleasant  instrument  for  the  indul- 
gence of  European  satire,  is,  at  the  same  time,  a  con- 


348  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

spicuous  example  of  the  potential  economic  equality 
which  has  characterized  citizens  of  every  class  in  the 
United  States.  It  is  in  such  community  as  this  that 
we  should  seek  that  development  of  capital  most 
useful  to  our  present  inquiry.  It  will  be  observed 
that  within  the  past  half  century  the  economic  life  of 
the  United  States  has  changed  very  rapidly,  much 
more  rapidly  than  that  of  other  countries.  It  has 
developed  a  steam-power  out  of  all  proportion  with 
its  population  as  compared  with  similar  development 
in  other  communities.  It  has  abolished  an  extensive 
system  of  slave-labor  which  was  out  of  harmony  with 
economic  progress.  And  it  has  produced  a  moral 
sense  among  the  mass  of  people  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  is  unique  and  paradoxical. 

But  while  this  is  true,  it  is  none  the  less  true  that 
corresponding  changes  in  government  have  taken 
place  with  an  equal  and  resultant  rapidity.  Those 
who  believe  that  the  written  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  is  the  organic  law  of  the  land  are  suffering 
under  a  political  delusion  of  a  remarkable  complexity. 
The  written  Constitution  has  never  been  the  organic 
law  since  the  moment  of  its  adoption.  The  real 
organic  law  is  the  moral  sense  of  the  people,  more 
or  less  adequately  and  tardily  defined  by  the  enact- 
ments of  legislatures.  The  decisions  and  the  inter- 
pretations of  the  so-called  Supreme  Court  have 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  shifting  moral 
standard  of  the  people  or  with  the  action  which  issues 
out  of  moral  ideas.  The  Constitution,  as  interpreted 
by  the  Supreme  Court,  held  that  slavery  was  just. 
But  the  majority  of  the  people  abolished  the  Consti- 
tution and  the  Supreme  Court,  too,  for  four  years, 
while  the  real  organic  law  was  in  effect  and  in  force. 


IX  THE   LAW   OF   CAPITALIZATION  349 

It  would  need  no  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court 
to  teach  the  people  of  the  United  States  that  trial 
without  jury  is  unconstitutional.  Yet  trial  without 
jury,  and  condemnation  to  death  and  execution  with- 
out trial,  are  common  practices  in  the  United  States, 
and  are  morally  approved  by  the  majority.  If  the 
Constitution  were  the  supreme  law,  and  not  a  mere 
political  superstition,  it  would  be  enforced  in  all 
respects  by  the  will  of  the  majority.  But  the  major- 
ity do  not  know  even  the  principal  articles  of  the 
Constitution,  yet  they  seem  to  understand  quite  thor- 
oughly when  their  political  or  economic  rights,  —  as 
conceived  by  them,  —  whether  constitutional  or  not, 
are  restrained.  If  there  be  any  act  of  an  individual 
which  the  Constitution  leaves  him  perfectly  free  to 
do,  it  would  appear  to  be  an  act  by  which  he  unites 
his  capital  with  that  of  another  for  purposes  of  econ- 
omy. Yet  the  real  organic  law  forbids  this  act,  and 
it  is  also  forbidden,  with  absurdly  superstitious  limi- 
tations, by  the  national  legislature. 

In  the  United  States  it  is  a  crime  to  coalesce  cap- 
ital for  the  purpose  of  advance  in  prices.  As  if  any 
judge,  jury,  or  legislator  could  determine,  by  any 
conceivable  method,  whether  this  is  the  purpose  of 
coalition  or  not !  The  Supreme  Court  might  decide, 
by  the  toss  of  a  coin,  whether  or  not  this  law  were 
constitutional,  and  the  decision  would  have  the  same 
effect  upon  public  opinion  as  if  that  decision  were 
made  after  severe  and  prolonged  contemplation,  as 
in  the  case  of  its  decision,  for  example,  that  a  black 
man  had  no  rights  which  the  Constitution  required  a 
white  man  to  respect. 

It  will  thus  be  observed  that  the  government  of 


350  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

the  United  States  has  changed  materially  and  is  now 
changing  more  rapidly  than  ever  before.  All  ideas 
whereby  it  is  conceived  that  the  government  is 
fixed  are  mere  superstitions,  arising  from  false  per- 
ceptions of  the  true  relations  of  government  to 
wealth.  With  these  facts  in  mind,  we  can  ration- 
ally proceed  with  our  inquiry  as  to  the  co-progres- 
sive action  of  capitalization  and  government  in  that 
most  interesting  group  of  which  we  have  been 
writing. 

For  the  sake  of  convenience  in  the  argument,  we 
can  suppose  that  there  are  two  kinds  of  growth  — 
simple  and  compound.  Of  course,  we  mean  relative 
simplicity,  and  relative  complexity.  We  can  suppose 
that  the  growth  of  a  cell  is  of  the  simple  kind.  That 
is,  the  cell  draws  into  itself,  and  incorporates  into  its 
structure,  external  material  which,  after  assimilation, 
is  very  little  different  from  its  former  state.  If  we 
now  suppose  that  the  cells  unite  in  the  formation  of 
another  and  a  larger  structure,  let  us  say  a  human 
heart,  we  can  suppose  that  this  is  compound  growth. 
If  we  further  suppose  that  the  cells  unite  in  the 
formation  of  numerous  such  structures,  until  the 
complicated  mechanism  called  a  man  is  produced, 
we  can  say  that  this  new  arrangement  is  a  growth 
of  a  more  highly  compound  kind.  These  characters 
of  the  simple  and  the  compound  are  observed  in  all 
social  growths  as  in  all  vital  growths.  The  degree 
of  the  complexity  of  the  compound  structure  is 
determined  by  the  complexity  of  the  environment. 
This  truth  we  have  discussed  fully  elsewhere,  and 
we  need  not  repeat  the  discussion  here.  But  it  is 
our  purpose  at  present  to  apply  the  principle  to  the 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  351 

growth  of  capital  as  that  process  is  observed  in  the 
United  States  of  America. 

In  primitive  societies  capital  consists  chiefly  of  land 
and  of  the  tools  used  for  its  cultivation.  The  sim- 
plest kind  of  capital  would  consist  of  a  hoe,  seeds, 
the  animals  used  for  propagation,  and  the  land  itself. 
The  capital  would  take  on  a  compound  growth  when 
the  hoe  would  become  a  plough,  and  when  some  of  the 
animals  would  be  used  to  draw  it.  The  compounding 
process  would  be  increased  when  the  animals  would 
be  used  as  money,  for  the  conversion  of  one  kind  of 
wealth  into  another,  and  for  the  valuation  of  all  kinds 
of  wealth.  As  the  environment  would  grow  in  com- 
plexity, new  and  more  efficient  forms  of  money  would 
be  discovered,  and  the  compounding  of  capital  would 
be  correspondingly  intricate.  It  will  be  remembered 
that  the  only  functions  of  capital  are  the  production 
and  division  of  wealth.  We  would,  therefore,  see  a 
compound  effect  following  upon  a  compound  cause. 
As  the  character  of  capital  became  compounded  into 
higher  and  higher  degrees  of  complexity,  the  char- 
acter of  the  method  of  production  and  distribution 
would  undergo  a  similar  transformation.  This,  it 
would  appear,  is  a  necessary  truth. 

But  in  a  complex  like  a  progressing  human  society 
there  would  be  numerous  and  ever  multiplying  instru- 
ments of  capital  which  would  interact  upon  each 
other  in  a  manner  so  as  to  further  facilitate  this 
very  process  of  compounding.  Every  fresh  dis- 
covery of  new  relations  to  the  environment  would 
cause  a  change  in  the  method  of  capitalization,  pro- 
duction, and  distribution.  The  force  which  would 
necessitate  these  changes  would  be  the  desires  of 


352  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

men,  generally,  for  increase  of  possessions.  And 
the  compound  result  of  this  conflict  would  be  a  pro- 
gressive action  toward  an  equality  of  diffusion  of 
wealth.  Every  new  discovery  would  be  "fortui- 
tous" or  "accidental,"  as  far  as  these  words  have 
any  meaning  whatever.  The  truth  as  to  social  prog- 
ress is  quite  simple.  Communities  in  which  certain 
individuals  discover  new  methods  or  new  instruments 
of  capitalization  are  progressive  ones.  Those  in  which 
such  discoveries  are  not  made  are  backward  ones. 
There  is  no  mysterious  law  of  progress,  no  directing 
power  which  selects  some  communities  for  survival, 
some  for  elimination,  and  some  for  a  stationary  ex- 
istence. There  is  no  evidence  whatever  for  such 
belief.  On  the  contrary  there  is  every  evidence,  in 
fact,  that  progress  depends  upon  the  perceptions  of 
new  causal  relations  between  the  things  used  for  the 
production  and  diffusion  of  wealth. 

There  is  necessity,  too,  by  which  these  new  per- 
ceptions or  discoveries  must  at  once  become  social 
as  soon  as  they  are  made.  It  will  be  clear  that  few 
men  will  keep  an  invention  to  themselves,  when  its 
use  can  benefit  the  inventor  only  when  he  shares  his 
knowledge  with  others.  Thus  every  new  invention 
must,  of  necessity,  become  the  immediate  property 
of  all.  We  can  imagine  a  man  making  a  discovery 
and  allowing  it  to  die  with  him.  But  that  kind  of  a 
discovery  is  not  a  social  one,  and  hence  is  not  an 
element  of  social  progress. 

It  will  not  be  a  matter  for  controversy  when  we 
say  that  the  sum  of  useful  discoveries  with  relation 
to  capital  has  been  larger  in  America  than  in  any 
other  country.  We  should,  therefore,  expect  to  find 


ix  THE  LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  353 

that,  in  America,  the  character  of  capitalization  is 
more  highly  compound  than  in  any  other  country. 
And  such,  it  will  be  admitted,  is  the  fact.  If 
this  be  true,  it  should  follow,  upon  our  premises,  that 
the  character  of  production  and  distribution  is  com- 
pounded, in  America,  to  a  correspondingly  high 
degree.  An  objection  to  this  conclusion  may  be 
urged.  If  complex  capitalization  and  production 
are  followed  by  a  correspondingly  even  division  of 
wealth,  we  should  look  for  a  more  complex  kind  of 
capital  in  New  Zealand  than  in  America.  But  this 
objection  would  seem  to  be  answered  when  we  con- 
sider that  the  moral  ideas  of  that  community  are 
the  product  of  the  development  of  capital  in  Europe. 
In  other  words,  the  moral  characters  of  the  people  of 
New  Zealand  are  characters  derived  from  the  Euro- 
pean group  of  which  it  is  the  offspring.  These  char- 
acters were  carried  over  in  a  developing  state  from 
England,  and  when  left  alone  in  an  environment 
comparatively  free  from  pressure  of  population, 
developed  more  freely  and  rapidly  in  New  Zealand, 
even  with  a  less  complex  environment  than  that 
which  was  left  behind. 

Thus  the  moral  force  which  causes  progressive 
diffusion  of  wealth  in  a  new  and  comparatively  simple 
society,  may  be  really  due  to  the  more  complex  char- 
acter of  the  method  of  capitalization  which  has  been 
left  behind  in  an  older  society.  To  make  this  clear, 
we  will  suppose  that  a  dozen  men  of  different  social 
rank,  reared  in  London,  be  removed,  let  us  say,  to  an 
island  remote  from  civilization.  They  would  carry 
with  them  the  moral  ideas  normal  to  London.  Their 
complex  relations  in  the  matter  of  social  rank  would 

2A 


354  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

not  be  the  product  of  the  environment  upon  the 
island.  They  would  be  the  product  of  the  social 
state  of  England  and  its  entire  historical  develop- 
ment. But  is  it  not  manifest  that  these  moral  ideas 
would  be  subject  to  the  disturbing  force  of  the  new 
environment  ?  Would  not  common  necessity,  and 
common  freedom,  tend  to  break  down  the  ideas  of 
caste  carried  over,  and  bring  about  a  social  code  by 
which  rank  would  be  levelled  ?  Would  not  the  rank 
of  the  superior  ones  fall,  and  that  of  the  inferior  ones 
rise  toward  a  mean  at  which  the  rank  of  all  would  be 
much  more  nearly  equal  than  in  England  ?  Would 
not  this  process  be  simply  an  acceleration,  upon  a 
small  scale,  of  the  process  of  levelling  that  had  been 
going  forward  upon  a  large  scale  in  the  home  coun- 
try ?  And  would  not  this  acceleration  be  induced, 
not  by  the  sudden  increase  in  the  complexity  of  the 
environment,  but  by  a  sudden  simplification  of  the 
environment  while  the  moral  ideas  still  remained  in 
force  ? 

This  example  illustrates  the  forces  at  work  in  New 
Zealand,  which  have  produced  a  state  in  which  there 
is  comparatively  high  diffusion  of  wealth,  accompanied 
by  comparative  simplicity  of  capital  and  of  the  method 
of  capitalization.  It  is  moral  force  which  produces 
the  democracy  of  wealth  found  in  New  Zealand.  We 
shall  not  enter  here  into  a  discussion  of  the  point  as 
to  whether  that  moral  force  is  expended  in  a  method 
which  best  serves  the  economic  life  of  the  people, 
and  best  facilitates  the  flow  of  social  forces  to  their 
necessary  equilibrium.  If  it  be  admitted  that  the 
force  at  work  in  New  Zealand  is  a  moral  one,  that 
will  be  enough  for  the  present  needs  of  our  discus- 


ix  THE   LAW   OF  CAPITALIZATION  355 

sion.  We  do  not  desire,  at  all,  to  examine  into  ques- 
tions of  what  ougJit  to  be.  Our  sole  desire  is  to 
ascertain  the  nature  of  the  fact  as  it  is. 

The  politico-moral  code  of  the  United  States  was 
produced  very  much  in  the  same  way  as  would  be 
that  of  the  twelve  men  we  have  fancied  in  an  island 
remote  from  European  influences.  But  it  should  not 
be  forgotten  that  the  economic  environment  of  the 
United  States,  at  the  time  of  its  birth  as  an  inde- 
pendent group,  was  not  very  different  from  that  of 
England,  so  far  as  instruments  of  capitalization  are 
concerned.  If  anything,  England  was  in  advance  of 
the  United  States  in  many  ways.  In  the  latter  coun- 
try, slavery  in  its  most  efficient  form,  still  weighted 
down  the  life  of  a  large  part  of  the  nation.  But  this 
deterrent  force  need  not  be  considered,  because  the 
United  States  really  consisted  of  two  groups,  one  of 
which  was  far  more  moral  in  every  way  than  the 
other,  and  in  every  way  more  progressive.  And  this 
is  as  perfectly  true  at  the  present  time  as  it  was  before 
the  war  of  emancipation. 

When  we  speak  of  the  United  States,  we  mean 
that  powerful,  populous,  industrious,  highly  intelli- 
gent and  highly  moral  community  north  of  the  an- 
cient dividing  line  between  the  slave  states  and  the 
free  states.  It  is  this  community,  and  not  that  south 
of  the  ancient  line,  which  has  developed  capital  and 
its  new  methods.  The  southern  people,  with  their 
institutions  of  chivalry,  their  extravagancies  of  man- 
ner in  their  treatment  of  women,  their  antique  cour- 
tesies, their  lofty  ideals  of  family  association  and 
descent,  their  fine  sensibilities  of  personal  honor, 
their  rigid  conceptions  of  caste,  and  the  notable  lack 


356  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

of  scientific  knowledge  which  distinguishes  them  from 
their  northern  neighbors,  are  a  political  and  economic 
relic  of  an  old  regime  which  is  found  to  be  an  en- 
cumbrance to  the  free  movement  of  the  enlightened, 
modern,  and  free  community  which  is  properly  and 
historically  the  United  States  of  America. 

But  if  the  development  of  capital  in  England  pro- 
duced the  politico-moral  code  of  the  new  polity,  the 
economic  development  of  the  United  States  was  freer 
and  faster  than  that  of  the  older  country  in  which  the 
population  was  proportionately  large.  The  new  com- 
munity could  find  better  and  larger  uses  for  inventions 
discovered  in  Europe,  because  the  new  environment 
was  infinitely  more  elastic  than  the  old,  and,  in  many 
ways,  had  yet  to  be  built.  Not  only  was  this  true, 
but  the  absolute  number  of  American  inventions  for 
use  as  capital  was,  and  is,  much  larger  than  that  of 
any  community  in  Europe.  Discoveries  of  this  kind 
were  made  in  the  United  States  which  were  not  made 
elsewhere.  This  simple  fact  accounts  for  the  very 
rapid  rearrangement  of  the  method  and  its  use  found 
in  the  United  States.  It  is  natural  that  we  should 
look  for  this  development  of  capitalization  in  a  com- 
munity with  a  more  complex  character  of  capital 
rather  than  in  one  with  a  less  complex  character. 

To  reduce  this  abstract  statement  to  a  concrete 
example,  let  us  look  at  the  possibilities  of  capitaliza- 
tion in  two  countries  rather  widely  separated  in  this 
respect,  say  England  and  Russia.  The  former  has 
been  a  distinctively  manufacturing  community,  and 
the  latter  a  distinctively  agricultural  one.  The 
variety  of  capital  in  England  has  been  very  much 
greater,  therefore,  than  in  Russia.  The  one  has  had 


IX  THE  LAW   OF  CAPITALIZATION  357 

a  very  complicated  system  of  production,  the  other  a 
very  simple  one.  The  purely  financial  instruments 
of  capitalization  will  always  be  found  to  take  their 
character  from  that  of  the  actual  instruments  used  in 
the  creation  of  wealth.  Thus  if  production  is  carried 
on  in  factories,  in  which  are  assembled  many  men  and 
many  machines,  we  should  find  a  banking  system 
arising  because  of  the  desires  of  wage-earners  to 
deposit  their  future  capital  in  a  safe  place.  But  this 
system  would  soon  give  rise  to  new  functions  of 
banking  not  associated  with  deposit  functions.  And 
as  these  new  functions  would  necessitate  the  devise- 
ment  of  new  forms  of  money,  or  its  equivalent,  we 
should  see  capital  coalescing  in  funds  jointly  owned 
by  several  persons.  Once  that  the  advantages  of  the 
joint  stock  company  became  apparent,  the  joint  stock 
idea  would  become  organic  in  such  society,  and  would 
tend  to  displace  the  old  system  of  individual  owner- 
ship and  of  individual  superintendence  of  production. 

This  is  the  process  which  has  actually  gone  forward 
in  England.  But  it  should  be  clear  that  if  England 
had  made  no  mechanical  discoveries,  which  facilitated 
the  rapid  growth  of  the  factory  system,  these  new 
possibilities  of  capitalization  could  never  have  been 
perceived.  Indeed,  to  hold  such  contention  would  be 
the  equivalent  of  holding  that  a  relation  can  be  per- 
ceived between  two  things  one  of  which  is  non-exist- 
ent; and  this  is  manifestly  absurd. 

If,  now,  the  method  of  capitalization  in  England  is 
far  more  complex  than  in  Russia,  and  only  because  of 
the  higher  complexity  of  its  capital,  it  should  be  clear 
that  the  same  logic  is  applicable  when  we  compare 
the  method  of  capitalization  in  England  with  that 


358  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

observed  in  the  United  States.  We  can  easily  imag- 
ine how  England  might  never  have  progressed,  finan- 
cially, even  after  the  discovery  of  the  factory  system. 
We  can  imagine  that  nobody  in  England  had  ever 
heard  of  a  bank  using  its  deposits;  that  future  capi- 
talists had  simply  placed  their  money  in  banks,  paid 
for  its  custody,  and  drew  it  out  when  desired ;  that 
bankers  had  been  content  with  this  function,  and  that 
the  idea  of  lending  money  for  productive  purposes 
had  never  been  applied  to  capital  in  machinery.  But 
all  of  this  is  the  reverse  of  truth.  Some  one  did 
actually  conceive  the  idea  of  a  joint  stock  company, 
and  conceived  it  by  simply  noting  a  new  possible  rela- 
tion between  capital,  in  its  symbolic  form,  and  capital 
in  its  creative  form. 

A  similar  process  of  thought  has  taken  place  in  the 
United  States.  Somebody  perceived  that  it  was  pos- 
sible to  compound  existing  documentary  capital  into 
a  more  complex  form,  and  that  this  new  form  would 
greatly  facilitate  the  purpose  of  investment.  That 
purpose,  as  everybody  knows,  is  the  acquisition,  by 
individuals,  of  the  largest  possible  quantity  of  wealth 
in  the  smallest  possible  time.  That  this  process  has 
taken  place  is  a  self-evident  truth.  The  new  system 
of  capitalization  is  here,  and  it  came  about  in  the  way 
described  and  in  no  other.  In  fact,  there  is  no  other 
way  in  which  it  could  come  about.  It  was  first  pro- 
duced in  the  United  States  because  the  new  discovery 
was  first  made  in  that  country.  It  may  have  been 
made  by  one  individual,  or  by  several  at  different 
times,  or  by  several  simultaneously.  But  once  having 
been  made,  it  must  at  once  have  become  organic. 
It  is  hardly  needful  to  go  into  the  details  of  this  new 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  359 

and  highly  compounded  method  of  investment,  for  it 
is  a  fact  so  very  conspicuous  that  it  has  become  the 
principal  political  question  in  the  United  States.  The 
people,  in  the  mass,  know  quite  well  what  is  the  nature 
of  the  new  companies  of  capitalists  erroneously  desig- 
nated by  the  term  "  trusts  "  —  a  term  invented  by  the 
inventors  of  the  method.  The  details  of  the  method 
vary  with  different  species  of  the  genus,  but  the  prin- 
ciple is  alike  in  all. 

The  social  forces  which  lay  at  the  root  of  the  dis- 
covery were  precisely  the  same  as  those  which 
brought  about  the  association  of  wage-earners  in 
labor  unions.  It  was  natural  that  the  labor-union 
idea  should  be  older  than  that  of  similar  associations 
of  capitalists.  Labor  and  capital  are  only  different 
aspects  of  one  and  the  same  process  —  production 
and  distribution  of  wealth.  But  the  desires  of  wage- 
earners  for  larger  shares  of  wealth  are  more  pressing 
than  those  of  capitalists  and  for  reasons  that  are 
obvious.  Therefore,  we  should  find  that  natural 
selection  would  act  first  in  that  part  of  the  process 
whereat  the  forces  converged  most  powerfully.  Labor- 
unionism  and  the  "trust"  method  of  capitalization 
have  no  causal  relations  whatever.  They  are  two 
distinct  phenomena  of  distribution  produced,  inde- 
pendently of  each  other,  by  natural  selection.  We  can 
imagine  labor-unionism  progressing  without  any  corre- 
sponding progression  in  capitalization,  and  vice  versa. 
But  we  cannot  imagine  that  either  would  be  produced 
or  developed,  save  by  the  discovery  that  association 
was  a  highly  efficient  instrument  for  rapidly  increas- 
ing the  shares  of  wealth  flowing  back  to  wage-earners, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  to  capitalists  on  the  other. 


360  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

The  very  efficiency  of  the  new  system  of  capitali- 
zation would  cause  it  at  once  to  be  approved  and  con- 
demned by  a  very  large  and  a  very  small  class  of 
persons  in  the  beginning  of  its  operation.  But  here 
we  must  observe  a  very  significant  difference  in  moral 
ideas  as  applied  to  the  so-called  trusts  and  to  labor 
unions.  Labor  unions,  at  first,  were  approved  only 
by  the  very  small  number  of  persons  whom  they 
directly  benefited.  Then  they  were  approved  by 
progressively  large  numbers.  Then  by  many  of 
those  who  at  first  conceived  them  to  be  hurtful. 
And  lastly  by  the  government. 

The  "  trust "  method  of  capitalization  was  at  first 
condemned  only  by  the  comparatively  small  number 
of  capitalists  by  whom  the  method  was  conceived  to 
be  hurtful.  Then  it  was  condemned  by  growingly 
large  numbers,  not  themselves  concerned  with  capi- 
talization. Then  it  was  condemned  by  large  inde- 
pendent capitalists  who  had  been  the  first  to  approve 
it.  And  lastly,  it  was  condemned  by  the  government. 
We  observe  here  a  reverse  action  in  moral  forces. 
Methods  of  association  which  are  perceived  to  facili- 
tate the  acquisition  of  wealth  by  the  many  are  pro- 
gressively approved.  Methods  which  are  perceived 
to  facilitate  the  acquisitions  of  wealth  by  the  few 
are  progressively  condemned. 

But  it  must  be  observed  that  they  are  not  con- 
demned because  the  many  are  surrendering  larger 
and  larger  shares  of  wealth.  For  we  know  that  the 
distribution  of  wealth  has  been,  and  is,  progressively 
diffusive.  The  growth  of  labor-unionism  alone  would 
prove  this  to  be  the  truth.  Why,  then,  this  progres- 
sive condemnation  of  this  new  method,  which  has  been 


IX  THE   LAW   OF  CAPITALIZATION  361 

found  to  be  so  highly  efficient  an  instrument  for  the 
satisfaction  of  the  desires  of  capitalists  ? 

We  should  look  to  the  labor  unions  for  an  answer. 
So  long  as  there  exists  among  laborers  a  potential 
equality  in  the  acquisition  of  wealth,  association  would 
be  condemned.  When  association  limits  the  power 
of  the  individual  to  rise  to  greater  possessions,  the 
idea  of  association  must  ever  be  accompanied  by  ideas 
of  pain.  On  the  other  hand,  so  long  as  there  exists 
in  a  society  a  potential  equality  among  capitalists 
of  all  kinds,  association  among  capitalists  will  be 
approved.  But  when  that  association  is  perceived 
to  contract  the  potential  equality  to  progressively 
small  numbers  of  capitalists,  and  to  smaller  areas 
of  capital,  such  association  will  be  condemned.  It 
will  be  condemned  not  only  by  those  capitalists 
who  are  unable  to  use  the  method,  but  by  that  very 
much  larger  number  of  men  who  are  not  capitalists 
at  all.  For  potential  equality  in  the  use  of  capital  is 
far  more  desirable  to  wage-earners  than  to  capitalists 
themselves.  The  wage-earner  can,  with  this  equal- 
ity in  his  possession,  always  hope  to  transform  his 
saved  wages  into  the  most  desirable  form  of  wealth  ; 
whereas  without  this  equality  he  can  never  hope  to 
do  so. 

We  can  thus  apprehend  the  reason  why  the  com- 
pounding of  capital  on  a  very  large  scale  is  condemned 
by  all  but  the  compounders.  It  is  condemned,  not 
because  it  is  conceived  to  diminish  the  possessions 
of  the  many,  but  because  it  is  conceived  to  prevent 
the  rapid  increase  of  the  wealth  of  the  many,  or  the 
potentiality  of  such  increase.  The  new  system  of 
capitalization  is  not  reprobated  by  those  who  use  it, 


362  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

but  by  those  who  conceive  that  its  use  by  some,  or 
by  a  few,  limits  the  possibility  of  its  use  by  all. 

Such  moral  ideas  as  these,  with  regard  to  capital, 
will  not  be  found  in  communities  wherein  wealth  is 
diffused  in  low  degree.  It  is  possible  that  they  may 
exist  in  a  few  minds  which  partially  perceive  the 
true  relations  of  government  to  capital.  But  these 
minds  are  those  of  individuals  who  have  possessed 
wealth,  or  have  used  the  wealth  of  others,  in  com- 
paratively large  quantities.  The  ideas  of  these 
individuals  never  become  organic  in  the  societies 
surrounding  them,  and  government  progresses  slowly 
in  its  expansion  or  contraction  over  areas  of  capital, 
which  adjust  themselves  to  the  quantity  and  diffusion 
of  a  community's  wealth.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine 
a  person,  born  and  reared  in  slavery,  suddenly  ac- 
quiring moral  ideas  to  which  his  state  of  bondage  is 
highly  repugnant.  But  if  the  slave  be  supposed  to 
have  acquired  a  considerable  fortune  of  his  own  by 
easy  stages,  we  can  imagine  him  passing  from  the 
bond  to  the  free  state  without  any  sensible  convulsion 
of  feeling.  His  moral  ideas  would  be  in  equilibrium 
with  his  possessions,  and  his  capacity  for  the  use  of 
wealth  adjusted  to  the  quantity  of  wealth  of  which 
he  was  master.  But,  while  he  was  accumulating  his 
fortune,  any  interference  with  this  process  would  be 
condemned  by  him  as  wrong ;  and  once  having  se- 
cured his  liberty,  he  would  use  every  means  in  his 
power  to  enforce  his  moral  conviction  that  liberty, 
for  him,  was  right. 

A  process  very  similar  to  this  has  gone  forward  in 
the  United  States  with  concern  to  capitalization.  The 
individual  citizen  has  possessed  increasingly  efficient 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  363 

means  of  acquiring  wealth.  His  potentiality  for  the 
possession  of  unlimited  quantities  of  things  has 
been  very  high.  This  truth  is  seen  in  the  fact  that 
the  immensely  wealthy  men  in  America,  with  a  few 
exceptions,  have  risen  to  their  possessions  from  com- 
parative poverty,  and  in  a  very  short  time.  But 
the  new  method  of  capitalization  is  conceived  to 
interfere  with  this  potentiality,  and  it  is  now  con- 
demned by  all  except  those  who  practise  it,  and  they 
are  comparatively  few.  We  should  therefore  expect 
that  the  many,  who  conceive  their  liberties  restricted, 
should  use  the  most  powerful  means  at  hand  to  re- 
move the  disability  imposed  upon  them  by  others. 
The  only  means  available  is  government,  and  hence 
we  find  that  government  is  uniting  with  capital  in  the 
United  States  over  areas  which  are  proportional  to 
the  diffusion  of  wealth.  This  action  is  made  easy 
and  natural  by  the  fact  that  political  power  is  meas- 
ured by  the  diffusive  character  of  the  wealth  pos- 
sessed by  a  society. 

In  America,  the  majority  are  the  rulers.  Most  of 
the  wealth  of  the  community  is  in  the  hands  of  the 
majority.  The  majority,  therefore,  have  used  their 
power  to  compel  the  minority  to  refrain  from  acts 
which  are  conceived  by  the  majority  to  be  wrong, 
although  conceived  by  the  minority  to  be  right.  In 
doing  this  the  functions  of  government  have  been 
applied  to  areas  of  capital  which  were  before  free 
from  contact  of  this  kind.  Government  has  simply 
extended  its  control  over  things  which,  before,  were 
outside  the  interference  of  its  power.  These  things 
are  the  instruments  used  by  capitalists  for  the  crea- 
tion of  wealth  and  its  division  among  men.  The  idea 


364  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

of  government  control,  once  having  been  conceived, 
rapidly  became  organic,  and  is  now  approved  by  the 
moral  sense  of  the  community.  But  the  process, 
like  all  other  forms  of  growth,  is  a  progressive  one. 
The  very  nature  of  the  forces  at  work  necessitates 
progressive  action.  The  action  cannot  stop  with 
mere  government  supervision  of  capitalists.  This  is 
true  because  the  purpose  of  the  control  is  not  mili- 
tant, as  in  supervision  of  industry  for  revenue, — 
like  that  of  the  distilling  trade,  —  but  industrial. 

We  cannot  conceive  the  action  of  government 
stopping  at  mere  supervision  while  the  progress  of 
private  capitalization  goes  on.  The  relation  between 
the  two  processes  is  a  causative  one,  and  both  must 
progress  together.  If  mere  government  supervision 
be  found  in  no  wise  to  affect  the  method  of  private 
capitalization,  action  by  the  government  which  shall 
be  more  than  supervisory  must  be  taken.  There  is 
no  other  alternative.  If  government  contact  with 
capitalization  stops  at  mere  supervision,  and  the 
supervision  in  no  wise  limits  the  process  of  private 
capitalization,  the  latter,  it  is  clear,  must  go  forward. 
But  this  would  be  equivalent  to  saying  that  economic 
progress  is  in  advance  of  moral  progress,  or  that  the 
possessions  of  men  exceed  their  capacities  for  use. 
And  this  conclusion,  it  is  manifest,  is  absurd.  For  a 
man  thinks  it  is  right  that  he  should  have  more 
wealth  because  the  wealth  he  possesses  capacitates 
him  for  use  of  still  larger  possessions.  The  moral 
force  which  has  caused  government  supervision  of 
capitalization  can  find  no  outlet  in  action  which  stops 
with  bare  supervision.  To  find  an  outlet  it  must 
secure  action  which  will  do  the  very  thing  super- 
vision fails  to  do. 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  365 

In  what,  now,  can  this  action  be  found  to  consist  ? 
Is  it  not  clear  that  it  can  consist  only  in  the  actual 
use  of  wealth  or  of  capital  by  government  itself?  If 
we  should  find  government  passing  from  mere  super- 
vision to  the  management  of  private  capital,  to  the 
regulation  of  wages  and  of  prices,  would  not  this 
action  be  only  an  enlargement  of  the  areas  of  capital 
in  contact  with  government  ?  And  would  not  this 
contact  be  approved  by  the  many  whom  it  would 
benefit?  The  most  generally  desired  occupation 
among  wage-earners  is  that  of  service  under  govern- 
ment, because,  other  things  being  equal,  government 
pays  higher  wages  than  do  private  capitalists.  But 
the  number  of  servants  used  by  government  is  com- 
paratively few.  There  is  hence  but  a  small  area  of 
potential  equality  for  persons  desiring  public  employ- 
ment. But  if  we  conceive  the  area  of  public  capital 
to  expand,  this  area  of  potential  equality  will  be  con- 
ceived to  expand  with  it.  And  as  this  public  use  of 
capital  would  cause  a  more  general  diffusion  of 
wealth,  the  areas  with  which  public  function  would 
unite  would  progressively  enlarge.  We  must  accept 
these  conclusions  or  be  forced  to  contend  that  eco- 
nomic progress  can  go  on  while  moral  and  political 
ideas  are  at  a  standstill.  It  is  impossible  to  take  a 
middle  ground  between  these  two  conceptions.  That 
this  is  true  a  little  reflection  will  show. 

If  it  be  admitted  that  social  forces  are  flowing 
backward  in  the  United  States,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  the  principles  we  have  laid  down  in  the  first  part 
of  this  book  are  untrue.  We  would  have  to  argue, 
in  support  of  that  contention,  that  men  do  not  exert 
themselves  for  the  gratification  of  their  basic  desires 


366  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

of  nutrition  and  propagation ;  that  increased  pos- 
sessions do  not  enlarge  human  capacity  for  the  use 
of  wealth ;  and  that  moral  conceptions  do  not  con- 
demn murder  as  the  highest  evil,  and  approve  charity 
as  the  highest  good.  We  would  have  to  argue  that 
the  sciences  of  biology,  of  psychology,  and  of  politi- 
cal economy  are  mere  logomachies  —  words  without 
any  meaning  whatever.  We  would  be  compelled  to 
admit  that  money,  and  the  multiplication  of  mechani- 
cal devices,  tend  to  restrict  the  more  equable  diffusion 
of  wealth  rather  than  to  facilitate  it.  We  would  have 
to  admit  that  political  progress  has  not  taken  place, 
and  that  men  are  less  intellectual,  less  aesthetic,  and 
less  moral  to-day  than  fifty  years  ago.  These  things 
are  self-contradictory. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  be  contended  that  eco- 
nomic progress  can  go  on  while  political  and  moral 
ideas  remain  fixed,  we  must  be  compelled  to  admit 
that  moral  and  political  progress  have  nothing  to  do 
with  wealth  and  its  uses.  This  conclusion  is  quite  as 
absurd  as  those  enumerated  in  the  preceding  para- 
graph. The  only  other  conclusion  conceivable  is  that 
which  conceives  economic  progress  to  have  reached 
its  limit  of  action  in  the  United  States,  and  which 
sees  in  the  new  system  of  capitalization  an  action 
of  a  retrogressive  character.  To  this  conception  it 
would  seem  that  the  diffusion  of  wealth  in  the  United 
States  has  reached  its  highest  possible  degree.  Fur- 
thermore, that,  as  the  forces  at  work  are  not  in 
equilibrium,  wealth  is  in  process  of  progressive  cen- 
tralization. And  lastly,  as  this  process  seems  to  be 
a  very  rapid  one,  the  time  must  soon  come  when  all 
but  an  insignificant  part  of  the  capital  of  the  com- 
munity will  be  in  the  hands  of  a  few  individuals. 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  367 

But  this  third  conclusion  is  not  borne  out  by  the 
facts.  If  it  were,  we  should  see  the  government  of 
the  United  States  in  the  hands  of  a  comparatively 
small  number  of  very  wealthy  capitalists.  We  would 
not  see  increasing  popular  demand  for  the  control  of 
capital  by  government.  We  would  not  see  laws  in 
restraint  of  the  liberty  of  capital  upon  the  statute 
books  of  the  central  government,  and  upon  those  of 
all  but  a  few  of  the  coordinate  states  into  which  the 
nation  is  divided.  We  would  not  see  a  growing  dis- 
satisfaction with  the  perceived  inefficiency  of  the 
laws  which  have  been  already  enacted.  And  lastly, 
we  should  not  find  a  rapidly  increasing  public  senti- 
ment to  which  extensive  private  ownership  of  capital 
is  more  highly  repugnant  than  any  other  idea  asso- 
ciated with  wealth.  But  none  of  these  facts  could 
prevail  in  a  retrogressive  community.  In  such  com- 
munity the  very  reverse  of  these  facts  would  exist. 

For  the  capitalists  in  power  would  not,  it  is  plain, 
pass  laws  which  would  interfere  with  their  own  free- 
dom. If  the  compound  capitalists  are  the  real  rulers 
of  the  United  States,  it  is  they  who  would  appoint 
the  persons  composing  the  mechanism  of  govern- 
ment. It  would  matter  little  whether  the  judiciary 
and  the  legislators  were  formally  chosen  by  the  real 
rulers  or  not.  If,  after  election,  the  ruling  capitalist 
could  force  the  judges  or  the  legislators,  by  no  matter 
what  means,  to  do  his  will,  the  substance  of  his  power 
would  be  the  same.  But  who  will  contend  that  such 
are  the  facts  ?  That  legislators  are  sometimes  cor- 
rupted, that  judges  are  often  influenced,  and  even 
appointed  by  the  power  of  very  wealthy  capitalists, 
no  one  will  deny.  That  the  purposes  of  such  capital- 


368  THE  LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

ists  are  sometimes  served  by  complacent  judicial  and 
legislative  instruments,  may  be  very  true. 

But  when  this  is  done  it  must  be  done  secretly. 
Public  sentiment  revolts  against  a  representative  ruler 
who  can  so  far  disregard  his  trust.  The  public  mind 
in  the  United  States  is  more  highly  suspicious  of  its 
public  servants  than  that  of  any  other  community  in 
the  civilized  world.  So  much  so,  that  American 
judges  and  legislators  have  a  reputation  for  venality 
of  which  they  are  probably,  for  the  most  part,  un- 
deserving. But  even  if  they  are  extraordinarily 
corrupt,  they  dare  not  openly  accept  bribes.  All 
rulers  have  inefficient  and  venal  officers.  But  the 
treason  of  one,  or  several,  or  of  many,  does  not  con- 
stitute revolution.  If  political  power  were  passing 
from  the  many  to  the  few  in  the  United  States,  —  and 
these  few  the  compound  capitalists,  —  we  could  hardly 
expect  to  find  that  public  sentiment  would  point  in 
precisely  an  opposite  direction,  and  that  government 
and  capital  would  tend  to  unite  over  ever  enlarging 
areas. 

If  there  is  any  political  revolution  going  on  in 
America,  it  is  of  a  very  different  kind.  It  consists  in 
the  very  action  we  have  described  in  our  definition  of 
the  law  of  capitalization.  It  is  a  revolution  arising 
from  the  progressing  moral  code  of  the  community. 
Its  motives  are  found  in  the  common  desires  of  men 
for  larger  shares  of  wealth.  Its  action  is  approved  by 
the  majority,  who  to-day  condemn  as  wrong  that  which 
yesterday  they  approved  as  right.  It  is  a  revolution 
which  uses  force  as  its  method,  and  government  as 
the  instrument  of  that  force.  Its  purpose  is  not  the 
enlargement  of  the  power  of  private  capitalists,  but  a 


IX  THE  LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  369 

restriction  of  that  power  over  very  large  areas  of 
capital  itself.  This  is  the  real  revolution  that  is  going 
forward  in  America,  and,  while  the  forces  at  its  root 
are  in  action,  the  written  constitution  of  the  state  is 
set  aside  as  being  entirely  irrelevant  to  the  issue. 

Revolutions  are  marked  by  two  of  four  characters. 
If  the  form  of  the  government  be  elastic  and  its  mili- 
tary power  weak,  the  revolution  will  be  slow  and 
peaceful.  If  the  form  be  rigid  and  the  military 
power  strong,  the  revolution  will  be  rapid  and  violent. 
But  when  we  find,  in  a  state,  elasticity  of  form  of 
government  and  weak  military  power  existing  to- 
gether with  a  rapidly  progressing  economic  environ- 
ment, and  a  correspondingly  powerful  head  of  moral 
force,  the  revolution  should  be  both  rapid  and  peace- 
ful. This  third  character  or  revolution  is  now  observed 
in  the  United  States.  Its  causes  are  to  be  found  in 
the  progress  which  capitalization  has  been  making, 
and  in  the  increasing  diffusion  of  wealth  consequent 
upon  the  process.  As  the  results  of  the  enlarged 
method  of  capitalization  are  felt  in  the  intimate 
economic  life  of  the  community,  it  is  to  these  results 
we  must  now  turn  for  further  demonstration  of  the  law. 

We  have  not  neglected  to  note  that  the  nature  of 
capital  bears  an  intimate  relation  to  the  nature  of  pro- 
duction. With  this  truth  in  mind,  we  can  readily 
perceive  that  compound  capitalization  must  be  fol- 
lowed by  compound  production.  The  factory  system, 
which  supplanted  the  old  method  of  production,  was 
more  complex  than  the  old  method  because  of  the 
higher  complexity  of  the  instruments  used.  With  the 
rise  of  banking  —  as  it  was  especially  exemplified  in 
the  growth  of  the  government  bank  of  England  —  the 

2B 


370  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

symbols  of  capital  increased  in  number  and  kind,  and 
joint  stock  companies  arose.  Production  was  greatly 
facilitated  by  this  new  method  of  capitalization ;  but 
even  the  new  relations  of  production  caused  by  the 
joint  stock  company  were  simple  as  compared  with 
the  character  of  production  in  the  United  States, 
after  stock  companies  had  been  compounded  into 
"  trusts." 

Simple  production  in  arts,  other  than  agricultural 
ones,  was  found  exemplified  in  the  old  crafts,  or  guilds, 
when  the  capitalist  was  himself  a  tradesman,  and  when 
wage-earners  were,  in  their  way,  capitalists,  too,  for 
they  owned  their  tools.  But  when  machinery  re- 
placed tools,  capital  of  all  kinds  passed  over  from  the 
wage-earner  to  the  master,  and  the  character  of  pro- 
duction became  correspondingly  compound.  Joint 
stock  companies  increased  the  quality  of  this  new 
character,  for  that  method  tended  to  unite  several 
branches  of  industry  under  one  control.  Manufac- 
turers found  that  great  saving  could  be  encompassed 
by  creating  for  themselves  increasingly  large  numbers 
of  the  parts  of  their  finished  product.  With  the 
advent  of  the  "  trust "  in  America,  this  motion  was 
highly  accelerated.  So  much  so,  that  the  tendency 
became  increasingly  directed  toward  one  end,  and 
that  the  control  of  the  raw  material,  as  far  as  it  was 
possible  to  track  it  back  to  its  source  in  undeveloped 
nature. 

The  tendency  would  first,  of  course,  be  found 
developing  itself  along  lines  of  ownership  of  the 
material  itself,  and  of  the  different  instruments  of  pro- 
duction which  moulded  it  into  its  various  preparatory 
forms.  But  while  this  process  of  acquisition  would 


IX  THE   LAW   OF  CAPITALIZATION  371 

be  going  on,  capitalists  would  find  themselves  con- 
tinually hampered  by  a  very  essential  element  of 
production,  namely,  transportation.  For,  as  a  Ger- 
man economist  has  pointed  out,  a  commodity  is 
limited  in  its  "  form-utility  "  by  its  "  place-utility  "  ; 
for  example,  the  value  of  a  pair  of  shoes  will  increase 
as  the  shoes  approach  the  place  at  which  they  are  to 
be  delivered  to  the  user.  This  necessity  for  trans- 
portation would  move  capitalists  to  extend  their  con- 
trol, or  their  actual  proprietorship,  to  the  arteries  of 
transportation.  The  owners  of  railroads  would  mean- 
while have  seen  the  advantages  of  the  new  methods 
of  capitalization,  and  thus  the  means  of  transportation, 
being  controlled  by  a  plastic  and  highly  centralized 
mechanism  of  ownership,  would  be  ready  for  easier 
coalition  with  the  creative  capital  in  use. 

It  would  have  been  found  that,  as  the  few  object- 
ing capitalists  had  been  induced  to  yield  to  the 
superior  forces  at  work  in  the  process  of  compound- 
ing, the  number  of  allied  industries  ready  to  coalesce 
would  be  increasingly  large.  For  it  is  manifest  that 
the  new  method  would  rapidly  become  organic  and 
would  affect  all  industries  alike.  The  only  limitation 
would  be  to  those  industries  to  which  coalition  would 
be  seen  to  be  positively  hurtful.  But  in  all  industries 
in  which  association  increased  profits,  association 
would  be  practised.  Natural  selection  would  elimi- 
nate companies  of  capitalists  which  resisted  the  grow- 
ing method.  Thus  it  is  that  we  behold  the  character 
of  production  becoming  more  highly  compound  with 
the  progressive  compounding  of  capital. 

Let  us  inquire  into  the  relations  of  government  and 
capital  with  these  facts  in  mind.  In  what  manner 


3/2  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

would  the  law  of  capitalization  be  seen  to  act  in  these 
circumstances  ? 

Let  us  suppose,  for  example,  that  the  process  of 
combination  we  have  been  describing  tends,  as  is 
contended  by  many,  to  centralize  capital  in  a  very 
few  hands.  For  theoretical  purposes,  let  us  further 
suppose  that  while  this  process  is  going  on,  the  quan- 
tity of  wealth  in  a  community  remains  fixed,  and  also 
that  the  government  remains  unchanged.  In  the 
United  States  the  ruling  class  is  the  majority  of  all 
the  people.  Is  it  not  clear,  then,  that  with  this 
accumulation  of  capital  in  fewer  and  fewer  hands, 
government  would  withdraw  from  progressively  large 
areas  of  capital?  Is  it  not  clear  that  the  majority  — 
and  these  are  the  government  —  would  have  less  and 
less  control  of  capital  as  the  process  of  accumulation 
by  the  few  proceeded  ?  We  must  remember  that  the 
quantity  of  capital  thus  withdrawn  from  the  rulers 
must  be  compared  with  the  total  wealth  of  the  com- 
munity, and,  moreover,  that  this  total  quantity  of 
wealth  remains  unchanged.  Capital,  therefore,  would 
retreat  progressively  in  quantity  from  the  rulers,  and 
the  areas  over  which  government  united  with  it  would 
contract.  But  we  need  hardly  say  that  this  state  of 
affairs  is  a  purely  imaginary  one.  The  quantity  of 
wealth  in  the  United  States  does  not  remain  fixed. 
It  is  growing  at  an  enormous  rate.  And  it  is  grow- 
ing because  the  quantity  of  capital  is  not  limited  by 
the  quantity  of  land,  but  by  the  elastic  implements 
of  production  found  in  machinery.  Thus,  one  term 
of  the  ideal  equation  we  have  imagined  is  disposed  of. 
Now,  as  to  the  other  term. 

Is  it  a  fact  that  the  new  method  of  capitalization 


ix  THE  LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  373 

really  operates  so  as  constantly  to  decrease  the  num- 
ber of  capitalists  ?  If  the  reader  will  recall  our  dis- 
cussion of  the  uses  of  a  share  of  stock,  or  of  other 
forms  of  capital  of  like  nature,  he  will  be  prepared 
for  the  answer.  Unquestionably,  that  answer  is,  No. 

It  is  a  matter  of  commonplace  observation  that  the 
very  utility  of  stocks  and  bonds  consists  in  their 
negotiability.  The  desire  of  capitalists  for  increased 
wealth  does  not  differ,  in  its  nature,  from  the  desire 
of  other  men  for  the  same  thing.  If  by  compounding 
their  capital  into  stocks  and  bonds,  capitalists  can 
increase  their  wealth,  there  is  no  room  for  doubt  that 
they  will  so  compound  it.  But  the  capitalist  is  better 
served  in  his  desire  when  he  parts  with  some  of  his 
capital  than  when  he  retains  it  all.  And  his  desires 
move  him  to  action  which  results  in  the  dilution  of 
his  symbolic  capital  in  as  high  a  degree  as  the  quan- 
tity of  his  actual  capital  safely  allows.  But  the  only 
effect  of  this  process,  as  should  be  clear  at  a  glance, 
is  not  the  centralization  of  capital  toward  the  persons 
of  a  few,  but  its  diffusion  toward  the  persons  of 
many.  It  is  this  force  of  desire  for  quickly  acquired 
wealth  which  determines  the  entire  intricate  system 
of  industrial  finance  which  has  developed  so  rapidly 
in  the  United  States,  and  which  has  amazed  the 
financiers  of  the  Old  World.  Thus  we  dispose  of  the 
second  term  of  our  ideal  equation.  If  the  wealth  of 
the  United  States  is  growing  at  a  very  rapid  rate, 
the  number  of  capitalists  is  progressing  likewise. 
And  both  of  these  facts  are  seen  to  be  the  effect  of 
the  compounding  process  so  rapidly  going  forward  in 
America. 

These  forces,  like  other  forces  used  in  the  theory 


3/4  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

of  economic  science,  are  efficient  enough  when  we 
limit  our  considerations  to  ideal  things.  But  eco- 
nomic science  must  ever  remain  incomplete  and  in- 
adequate so  long  as  it  leaves  out  of  account  a  force 
which  is  very  different  from  those  we  have  been 
presently  dealing  with.  This  force  is  moral.  It  will 
be  futile  to  deal  with  only  some  of  the  forces  which 
enter  into  social  motion  and  leave  other  forces  alone. 
We  can  imagine  all  sorts  of  ideal  conditions,  and  such 
ideal  implements  are  highly  useful  and  necessary  in 
calculation.  But  if  they  are  to  explain  facts,  they 
must  idealize  all  facts.  The  importance  of  moral 
force  in  society  is  a  fact  which  must  never  be  for- 
gotten in  the  considerations  of  any  of  the  social 
sciences.  The  quantity  of  moral  force  may  be  large 
or  small ;  but  if  the  quantity  be  relatively  larger  than 
smaller,  it  would  appear  that  it  deserves  the  more 
careful  attention.  And  as  moral  force  has  been 
found,  in  our  preceding  studies,  to  be  of  prime  im- 
portance, we  cannot  neglect  it  here.  We  may  look, 
then,  for  the  moral  factor  in  capitalization. 

All  laws  which  are  enacted  for  the  restraint  of 
individuals  from  appropriating  property  that  belongs 
to  others  are  approved  alike  by  those  whose  posses- 
sions are  large  or  small.  It  is  not  only  because  all 
men  have  some  kind  of  wealth  that  they  provide  for 
the  protection  of  all  kinds  of  wealth.  It  is  also  be- 
cause all  are  potentially  wealthy  in  every  form.  The 
man  who  has  no  more  than  the  things  he  actually 
uses  for  food,  covering,  and  shelter,  is  vigorous  in  the 
prosecution  of  the  thief  who  steals  gold  from  a  bank. 
Why  ?  Not  because  the  thing  stolen  is  gold,  which 
our  supposititious  man  may  never  have  seen,  but 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  375 

because  gold  is  property,  and  because  property  in- 
cludes the  things  which  he  really  has.  But  if  we 
were  to  suppose  that  our  supposititious  man  were 
certain  that  he  could  never  possess  gold,  in  any 
quantity  whatever,  we  can  imagine  that  he  would  not 
be  concerned  with  a  law  framed  especially  for  the 
protection  of  gold.  But  if  gold  were  passing  into 
and  out  of  his  possession  occasionally,  he  would  be 
concerned  with  such  a  law  very  much  indeed.  Again, 
if  there  were  probability  that  at  any  time,  however 
remote,  gold  would  become  a  part  of  his  possessions, 
he  would  be  highly  concerned  with  such  a  law,  never- 
theless. And  this,  even  if  he  had  never  seen  the 
metal  and  had  no  hope  of  beholding  it  for  a  very  long 
time  to  come. 

If  we  apply  the  principle  illustrated  by  this  exam- 
ple to  the  matter  of  stocks  and  bonds,  which  repre- 
sent property  in  capital,  we  shall  be  approaching  the 
nature  of  the  moral  force  which  enters  into  the  pro- 
cess of  capitalization.  Industrial  stocks  are  commodi- 
ties in  the  open  market.  They  may  be  purchased 
for  comparatively  small  sums.  Any  man  may  at  any 
time  come  into  possession  of  them.  It  is  the  greater 
comfort  of  all,  therefore,  that  the  sanctity  of  these 
instruments  be  protected  by  laws  as  stringent,  in  de- 
gree, as  those  which  protect  property  of  other  kinds. 
But  who  is  it  that  is  conceived  to  violate  that  sanc- 
tity ?  Who  but  the  capitalist  who  controls  the  larg- 
est quantity  of  the  things  to  which  the  sanctity 
pertains  ?  How  can  this  individual  be  forced  to 
respect  that  sanctity  in  a  degree  over  and  above  that 
to  which  his  natural  bent  and  his  natural  love  of  wealth 
impel  him  ?  Clearly,  not  by  the  person  in  whose 


376  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

possession  the  minority  thing  remains.  His  power 
is  nil  as  compared  with  that  of  the  over-capitalist 
who  owns  the  largest  share  of  that  thing.  How  then 
can  this  majority  capitalist  be  coerced? 

The  answer  to  this  last  question  is  suggested  in  the 
questions  which  precede  it.  The  law  must  do  it  of 
course ;  and  in  attempting  to  do  it,  the  government 
must  unite  with  capital  of  kinds  which  it  did  not 
touch  before,  and  in  ways  which  are  as  novel  to  law 
and  its  enforcement  as  is  the  compound  method  of 
capitalization  to  the  old.  The  new  system  of  capi- 
talization compels  the  government  to  interfere,  not  as 
policeman,  but  as  capitalist.  When  private  capitalists 
take  advantage  of  their  power  to  do  injustice  to  their 
numerous  partners,  the  government  is  called  in,  not 
to  exert  its  police  power,  but  to  take  over  the  manage- 
ment of  the  capital  misused,  and  by  this  management 
see  that  justice  is  done  to  all  in  so  far  as  can  be  en- 
compassed. Why  is  it  that  the  government  is  called 
in  ?  Because  the  government  is  the  only  power  that 
can  be  resorted  to,  if  the  moral  force  of  the  majority 
who  hold  the  smaller  shares  of  the  enterprise  is  to  be 
satisfied.  And  why  is  it  that  the  government  uses 
its  power  not  as  a  policeman  but  as  a  capitalist  ? 
Why,  if  not  because  that  method  is  the  only  method 
possible  or  conceivable  in  the  case  ? 

It  may  not  be  amiss,  in  passing,  to  remark  upon 
a  fact  which  is  the  subject  of  common  comment  in 
America.  That  is  the  fact  that  whenever  govern- 
ment has  so  stepped  in,  the  results  have  been  highly 
beneficial.  Railroads  mismanaged  by  private  indi- 
viduals have  been  restored  in  a  very  short  time,  by 
government  management,  to  a  prosperous,  healthy, 


ix  THE  LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  377 

and  profitable  financial  state,  while  the  service  of  the 
roads  has  been  rendered  efficient  in  a  high  degree. 
And  it  is  to  be  observed  also  that  the  power  of  gov- 
ernment is  appealed  to  by  capitalists,  who,  through 
no  fault  of  their  own,  other  than  lack  of  foresight, 
have  found  themselves  incapable  of  managing  the 
interests  intrusted  to  them  by  others.  This  is  no 
more  than  a  surrender  of  capital  to  government. 

We  have  seen  that  the  quantity  of  wealth  in  the 
United  States  is  rapidly  increasing,  and  before  pro- 
ceeding farther  in  the  inquiry,  we  must  examine  into 
a  view  held  by  many,  namely,  that  the  new  methods 
of  production  and  capitalization  have  an  effect  on 
the  diffusion  of  wealth  contrary  to  that  which  we  have 
assumed  to  be  the  true  effect.  While  it  may  be  ad- 
mitted that  the  new  method  actually  increases  the 
number  of  capitalists  in  the  form  of  share  and  bond 
holders,  it  is  still  contended  that  the  wealth  of  the 
community,  capital  included,  is  flowing  back  in 
increasing  quantities  to  smaller  numbers  of  men 
whom  the  new  methods  are  found  to  benefit  to  the 
injury  of  the  many. 

Is  this  the  truth  ?  Or,  to  put  the  proposition  in 
the  proverbial  form,  is  it  true  that,  in  the  United 
States,  the  rich  are  getting  richer  and  the  poor 
poorer  ?  If  this  should  be  found  to  be  the  fact,  the 
cause  of  it  should  be  found  in  the  new  methods  of 
production  and  capitalization.  And,  furthermore,  if 
this  startling  assertion  be  true,  our  law  of  capitaliza- 
tion should  then  fail  completely.  For  we  should  find 
that  one  of  its  equations  is  false;  namely,  that  gov- 
ernment unites  with  capital  over  areas  that  vary  pro- 
portionally as  to  the  diffusion  of  wealth.  Instead  of 


378  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

finding,  as  we  do,  that  government  areas  of  capital 
are  expanding,  we  should  find  that  they  are  contract- 
ing. For  we  have  seen  that  with  increasing  wealth 
government  unites  with  capital  over  areas  which 
decrease ;  and  wealth  is  admittedly  increasing  in  the 
United  States. 

This  suggestion  brings  us  back  to  the  law  of  wages 
we  defined  in  the  chapter  on  "  Social  Kinetics."  We 
there  saw  that  wages  are  determined  by  the  produc- 
tivity of  capital.  This  fact  would  of  itself  increase 
the  shares  of  wealth  flowing  back  to  labor,  and  would 
likewise  enlarge  the  number  of  laborers.  But  to  this 
natural  economic  force  there  is  added  the  moral  force 
of  labor  unions.  Is,  now,  this  double  process  of  dif- 
fusion aided  or  retarded  by  the  new  method  of  capi- 
talization, and  by  the  compound  character  of  production 
consequent  upon  it  ?  The  question  is  one  which  seems 
to  have  been  discussed  with  considerable  caution  by 
such  American  economists  as  have  examined  into  it. 
Looking  at  it  broadly,  we  have  the  criticism  to  offer 
that  much  of  the  discussion  hinges  upon  isolated  facts 
rather  than  upon  general  principles.  We  shall  prefer 
to  adopt  the  latter  method  without  neglecting  to 
account  for  the  isolated  facts  as  we  go  forward. 

If  permitted  to  draw  a  somewhat  elementary  anal- 
ogy here,  we  should  fall  back  upon  the  familiar  exam- 
ple of  the  application  of  the  law  of  gravitation.  Let 
us  suppose  that  an  astronomer  finds  an  extraordinary 
perturbation  in  the  orbit  of  a  planet,  by  which  the 
planet  is  drawn  out  of  its  ellipse  into  an  orbital  motion 
that  is  circular,  or  very  nearly  so.  He  would  hardly 
be  justified  in  concluding  thence  that  the  law  of  ellip- 
ticity  were  false.  On  the  contrary,  the  exceptional 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  379 

character  of  this  perturbation  would  only  serve  to  lay 
stress  upon  the  law  and  more  clearly  demonstrate  its 
truth.  For  having  found  the  cause  of  the  perturba- 
tion, he  would  know  that  if  this  cause  were  removed, 
the  planet  would  readily  take  on  the  elliptical  motion 
normal  to  other  planets. 

Logic  of  very  much  the  same  character  may  be 
applied  to  the  effect  which  the  new  method  of  capi- 
talization has  upon  the  diffusion  of  wealth.  There 
need  be  no  doubt  whatever  that  capitalists,  acquiring 
suddenly  the  power  to  advance  prices,  would  be 
tempted  to  use  it  in  the  belief  that,  by  so  doing,  the 
quantity  of  their  wealth  might  be  increased.  And 
there  need  be  no  doubt  that  this  effect  might  be  found 
to  follow  in  many  instances.  But  we  should  hardly 
expect  to  find  them  persisting  in  this  action,  when 
some  little  experience  would  teach  them  that  its  final 
effect  would  be  the  opposite  of  that  which  was  first 
sought.  A  few  bold  experiments  of  this  kind  might 
result  in  suddenly  acquired  increase  of  wealth.  But 
the  successful  capitalist  is  distinguished,  ordinarily, 
by  two  characters —  prevision  and  self-control.  If  he 
perceives  that  by  waiting,  his  total  wealth  may  be 
very  much  more  largely  increased  than  by  sudden 
seizure  of  appropriable  things,  he  will  be  moved  to 
defer  the  satisfaction  of  his  desires. 

It  should  be  conspicuously  plain  to  the  average 
important  capitalist  that  demand  for  commodities  is 
regulated  by  the  supply.  If  the  supply  be  large  and 
the  price  low,  the  demand  will  be  lively.  But  the 
greater  the  supply,  the  more  pressing  will  be  the 
necessity  for  the  extension  of  the  producing  instru- 
ments. If,  on  the  contrary,  the  supply  be  artificially 


380  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

curtailed,  the  price  will  rise,  the  demand  will  decrease, 
and  the  quantity  of  producing  instruments  will  dimin- 
ish. A  very  few  experiments  would  be  all  that  would 
be  needed  to  convince  the  compound  capitalist  that 
his  desires  could  be  more  fully  satisfied  by  allowing 
his  capital  to  increase  naturally  and  by  working  his 
plant  to  its  highest  capacity,  while  at  the  same  time 
he  would  prepare  for  the  new  demand  by  extending 
his  plants.  We  might  even  suppose  that  he  would 
be  tempted  to  produce  periodic  contractions  of  sup- 
ply, or  even  attempt  to  force  up  prices  while  still  pro- 
ducing at  his  highest  capacity.  But  he  would  find, 
sooner  or  later,  that  this  process  disturbed,  rather 
than  facilitated  his  real  purpose.  The  tendency, 
then,  would  be  toward  greater  regularity  of  produc- 
tion, and  toward  increasingly  less  interference  with 
the  normal  process  of  things.  Repeated  experience 
is  the  only  sure  way  of  arriving  at  true  perceptions, 
no  matter  of  what  character.  And  the  repeated  ex- 
periences of  the  compound  capitalist  would  teach  him 
the  very  saving  truth  that,  in  large  social  processes, 
the  good  of  all  is  the  good  of  each.  This  truth  has 
been  long  ago  perceived  by  economists. 

The  sudden  closing  of  large  plants  by  newly 
formed  combinations  of  capital  is  a  phenomenon 
which  has  disturbed  the  minds  of  many.  But  there 
will  be  small  occasion  for  such  disturbance  when  it  is 
remembered  that  these  new  combinations  are  only 
learning  the  causes  of  those  over  supplies  of  product 
discussed  in  the  preceding  chapter.  The  apparent 
waste  is  encompassed  only  for  the  purpose  of  prevent- 
ing a  greater  waste.  Of  what  possible  use  is  wealth 
which  cannot  be  consumed  ?  In  the  transition  state, 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  381 

during  which  capital  is  passing  from  the  simple  to  the 
compound  character,  there  should  be  many  perturba- 
tions in  the  motion  of  production;  but  such  perturba- 
tions would  tend  to  become  smaller  in  number,  and 
less  painful  in  kind,  as  the  compounding  process 
increased,  and  as  the  motion  approached  its  norm. 
It  will  be  useful  to  consider,  too,  that  the  perturba- 
tions are  never  seen  accompanying  the  process  when 
the  capital  concerned  does  not  consist  of  instruments 
used  for  the  actual  creation  of  wealth.  The  quantity 
of  railroad  track,  abandoned  and  closed  to  traffic  when 
railroad  companies  combine,  is  insignificantly  small. 
And  even  in  those  productive  industries  which  are 
brought  to  higher  and  higher  levels  of  combination, 
the  quantity  of  abandoned  capital  diminishes  as  the 
total  quantity  of  capital  combined  is  large.  Thus  in 
the  unition  of  a  few  vast  interests,  we  see  not  a  dimi- 
nution, but  an  increase  of  productive  power. 

Sudden  or  great  advance  in  prices  by  an  industrial 
monopoly  is  always  the  occasion  of  sharp  criticism. 
No  matter  how  specious  may  be  the  pretexts  given 
by  the  monopoly,  the  public  always  credits  the  ad- 
vance to  one  cause  only  —  greed  of  capital.  And 
these  two  facts  are  interesting,  not  because  of  the 
advance  itself,  but  of  the  fact  that  it  is  reprobated  by 
the  public  on  the  one  hand,  and  excused  by  the  capi- 
talist on  the  other.  If  these  facts  prove  anything, 
they  prove  that  there  is  a  considerable  moral  force  at 
work  in  the  public  mind,  and  a  highly  sensitive  ap- 
preciation of  its  existence  on  the  part  of  capitalists. 
For  if  capitalists  were  not  afraid  of  public  opinion, 
they  would  raise  prices  without  palliation.  The  land- 
lord in  Ireland  seldom  apologizes  to  his  tenants  when 


382  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

he  raises  the  rent.  Why  ?  Because  he  does  not  fear 
the  moral  force  of  the  community.  But  when  we  find 
enormously  rich  capitalists  in  the  United  States,  —  and 
capitalists  who  have  a  monopoly  of  their  product,  — 
pleading  poverty  as  an  excuse  for  an  advance  in  prices, 
the  situation  becomes  grotesque,  unless  we  assume 
that  the  capitalist  fears  the  power  of  the  persons 
whose  wealth  he  is  attempting  to  appropriate. 

It  is  a  matter  of  not  the  slightest  concern  whether 
the  capitalist  is  lying  or  not  when  he  tenders  an 
explanation  and  an  excuse.  He  may  be  deceiving 
the  public,  or  he  may  be  telling  the  wholesome 
truth.  But  is  it  not  plain  that  he  is  afraid  of 
something  or  of  somebody  ?  If  prices  could  be 
systematically  advanced  by  clever  deception,  would 
not  capitalists  advance  prices  ad  infinitum  ?  And 
if  economy  compelled  them  to  advance  prices,  how 
could  they  do  otherwise  ?  But  in  either  contingency 
they  would  have  to  reckon  with  somebody.  Else 
they  would  advance  prices  without  ceremony.  What 
is  it  they  are  afraid  of  ? 

Are  they  not  afraid  that  any  persistent  advance  of 
prices,  from  whatever  cause,  would  draw  the  govern- 
ment into  their  affairs  for  the  purpose  of  rinding  out 
the  real  truth  of  the  matter  ?  If  these  facts  do  not 
disclose  the  imminent  proximity  of  government  and 
capital,  we  cannot  conceive  what  they  do  disclose. 
But  they  incidentally  disclose  the  fact  that  the 
method  of  compound  capitalization  is  not  conceived 
by  the  people  seriously  to  interfere  with  their  actual 
purchasing  power.  The  method  is  generally  con- 
demned for  a  very  different  reason,  as  we  have  seen. 
This  condemnation  does  not  arise  from  negative 


IX  THE  LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  383 

grounds,  but  from  positive  grounds.  It  arises  from 
the  idea,  organic  in  social  America,  that  no  man  has 
a  right  to  a  quantity  of  wealth  to  possess  which  there 
is  not  potential  equality  for  all. 

It  may  be  said  that  these  views  are  theoretical,  not 
practical ;  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  prices  are  ad- 
vanced by  aggregated  capitalists.  But  we  find  that 
these  advances  are  made  by  men  who  desire  quickly 
to  increase  their  wealth.  They  are  precisely  similar 
to  perturbations  from  the  elliptical  form  of  a  planet's 
orbit  to  the  concentric  form,  but  with  this  difference  : 
That  in  the  planetary  motion  the  perturbation  is  due 
to  the  presence  of  a  normal  force,  while  with  eco- 
nomic perturbation  the  cause  is  the  presence  of  an 
abnormal  force.  If  the  normal  motive  which  actuates 
capitalists  impels  them,  on  the  whole,  to  defer  their 
satisfactions,  it  should  be  plain  that  this  motive  will 
be  the  normal  one  moving  capitalists  of  a  compound 
character.  For  the  desires  of  all  men  are  the  same 
in  kind,  and  the  compound  capitalist  is  no  different 
from  capitalists  of  any  other  character.  The  theo- 
retical view  is  therefore  the  soundest  and  the  safest 
when  we  consider  the  facts  of  social  motion,  whether 
they  pertain  to  capital  or  not. 

But  there  is  another  view  to  be  taken  of  this  question 
which  can  hardly  be  accused  of  being  too  tenuously 
theoretical.  That  is  the  view  which  concerns  the 
effect  of  the  new  method  upon  the  diffusion  of 
wealth  when  the  element  of  labor  unions  is  consid- 
ered. It  is  a  notable  fact  that  capital  of  a  highly 
compound  character  has  less  friction  with  labor 
unions  than  capital  of  other  kinds.  This  would  be 
theoretically  implied  in  what  has  been  already  said. 


384  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

But  here  we  find  that  fact  and  theory  are  perfectly 
at  one.  Capital  compounded  in  high  degree  must, 
perforce,  capitulate  to  labor  which  is  itself  highly 
compound.  Very  little  experience  would  teach  capi- 
tal the  force  of  this  truth.  Indeed,  actual  expe- 
rience would  not  be  necessary  for  the  perception 
of  the  true  relation  between  the  two  forces.  And 
if  the  labor  union  be  conceded  to  be  an  efficient 
instrument  for  facilitating  the  progressive  diffusion 
of  wealth,  any  process  which  would  assist  it  in 
doing  so  would  itself  be  a  cTause  of  progressive 
diffusion. 

Thus,  if  we  sum  up  the  force  of  the  real  facts 
seemingly  for  and  against  the  view  that  the  new 
method  helps  the  progressive  diffusion  of  wealth,  we 
will  observe  that  the  facts  which  favor  the  affirma- 
tive conclusion  outweigh,  in  very  grave  measure,  the 
facts  which  seemingly  favor  the  negative  conclusion. 
And  these  latter  facts  have  been  seen,  upon  exami- 
nation, to  be  really  of  an  affirmative  kind ;  for  they  are 
only  perturbations  of  the  mean  motion,  and  they 
vanish  when  the  causative  forces  at  work  resume 
their  normal  modes.  If  we  now  ask  how  these  con- 
clusions agree  with  our  law  of  capitalization,  we  are 
convinced  that  they  will  be  found  to  take  their  places 
in  appropriate  sequence. 

In  the  hypothetical  case  we  examined  at  the  begin- 
ning of  our  application  of  the  law,  we  saw  that  gov- 
ernment encroached  upon  capital  as  the  quantity  of 
wealth  diminished  in  a  community  wherein  the  gov- 
ernment was  supposed  to  be  unchanging.  There,  the 
capital  being  chiefly  in  land,  and  the  ruling  class 
the  owners  of  land,  government  would  remain  over 


IX  THE   LAW  OF   CAPITALIZATION  385 

areas  of  land  as  other  kinds  of  wealth  would  shrink 
in  quantity. 

In  the  United  States,  increase  of  wealth  of  all 
kinds  swells  the  total  quantity,  but  in  the  United 
States  the  greater  part  of  wealth  is  measured,  not  by 
land,  but  by  things  other  than  land.  (Speaking  gen- 
erally, we  can  gauge  the  power  of  a  community  by 
the  horse-power  developed  by  its  steam.)  Let  us 
suppose,  now,  that  the  diffusion  of  wealth  in  the 
United  States  be  non-progressive.  That  is,  let  us 
suppose  that  all  men  would  grow  richer,  but  that 
they  would  grow  richer  proportionally.  There  would 
be  no  levelling  of  the  quantity  of  possessions  in  the 
hands  of  men  so  as  to  make  the  wealth  possessed 
by  each  more  nearly  equal  to  that  possessed  by 
others.  Each  would  grow  wealthier  in  proportion  to 
the  quantity  of  his  possessions.  In  this  state  of 
affairs  it  is  clear  that  as  wealth  increased  its  total 
sum,  the  areas  over  which  capital  would  unite  with 
government  would  contract.  But  the  contraction 
would  be  due  to  a  cause  other  than  that  producing 
the  same  effect  in  a  feudal  state.  An  increase  of 
wealth  in  land  is  not  due  to  an  increase  in  the  quan- 
tity of  land,  but  in  its  value.  Now  the  increment  in 
America,  in  the  circumstances  we  have  supposed  to 
exist,  would  not  be  an  increment  of  value  but  an  incre- 
ment of  absolute  quantity.  This  increase  would  be 
caused  by  the  activity  of  capital,  other  than  land,  in 
creating  new  things  which  would  add  to  the  sum  of 
riches. 

If,  now,  we  remember  that  product  grows  faster 
than  capital,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  quantity  of 
things  used  for  consumption  would  constantly  grow 

2C 


386  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

at  a  ratio  greater  than  the  ratio  at  which  would  grow 
the  quantity  of  things  used  for  production.  In  other 
words,  the  sum  of  wealth  would  increase  more 
rapidly  than  the  sum  of  capital.  And  as  all  capital, 
including  land,  would  be  united  with  the  ruling  class 
(in  America  the  majority  of  all  the  people),  govern- 
ment areas  of  capital  would  grow  progressively  small 
as  the  quantity  of  wealth  would  expand. 

But,  of  course,  this  is  not  the  fact.  The  diffusion 
of  wealth  in  the  United  States  is  progressive.  And 
as  government  and  capital  seek  each  other  in  direct 
ratios  as  to  the  diffusion  of  wealth,  we  should  find 
that,  as  diffusion  progresses,  areas  of  capital  over 
which  government  unites  grow  progressively  large. 
The  fact,  as  we  have  shown,  is  conspicuous  enough. 
It  should  be  clear,  also,  that  the  government  in 
America  being  democratic,  every  process  which 
facilitates  the  diffusion  of  wealth  tends  to  enlarge 
the  areas  of  capital  with  which  the  ruling  power 
unites. 

In  a  less  economically  developed  group,  the  rulers 
can  personally  superintend  the  operations  of  capital. 
But  there  are  two  reasons  why  this  is  impossible  in 
the  United  States.  First,  because  of  the  highly  com- 
pound state  of  capital ;  and,  secondly,  because  of  the 
great  diffusion  of  political  power.  The  only  method 
practicable,  in  these  circumstances,  is  the  use  of  the 
central  instrument  of  political  power,  and  that  instru- 
ment is  the  actual  mechanism  of  the  government. 
The  power  of  the  people  is  mighty,  but  it  cannot  be 
exerted  except  in  one  way,  and  that  one  way  is  de- 
termined by  the  substance  of  the  state.  We  have 
seen  that  the  form  of  the  state,  as  defined  in  its  gov- 


ix  THE   LAW   OF   CAPITALIZATION  387 

ernment,  changes  with  the  moral  standard  of  the 
people,  entirely  apart  from  the  written  constitution. 
We  have  seen  that  the  real  organic  law  is  defined  in 
the  action  of  the  people.  We  have  seen  that  the 
people  use  the  mechanism  of  the  government  to  limit 
the  action  of  private  capital  to  ever  decreasing  sur- 
faces; and  we  have  seen  that  government  takes  over 
the  positive  functions  of  capital  when  private  func- 
tion fails  to  satisfy  the  moral  wants  of  the  commu- 
nity. We  have  seen,  lastly,  that  these  facts  are  all 
accompanied  and  produced  by  the  compound  method 
of  capital,  which  serves  at  once  to  facilitate  the  diffu- 
sion of  wealth,  and  to  multiply  the  kinds  of  capital 
covered  by  government,  and  the  number  of  points 
at  which  government  comes  into  contact  with  them. 

We  have  now  to  examine  an  aspect  of  the  law  of 
capitalization  which  may  have  already  occurred  to 
the  reader,  and  which  as  yet  may  seem  to  be  obscure. 
According  to  the  terms  of  the  law  there  must  be 
present,  in  a  community  like  the  United  States,  a 
very  curious  phenomenon  with  relation  to  govern- 
ment and  capital.  In  the  United  States  the  diffu- 
sion of  wealth  constantly  progresses,  while  the 
quantity  of  wealth  progressively  expands.  This 
compound  motion  should  be  followed  by  a  progres- 
sive retreat  of  government  from  capital  simultane- 
ously with  a  progressive  advance  of  government 
upon  capital.  This  is  a  difficulty  which  seems,  in- 
deed, formidable,  but  which  is  quite  the  reverse  when 
the  nature  of  the  difficulty  is  understood. 

If  this  be  the  fact,  —  if  it  be  really  true  that  gov- 
ernment advances  upon  capital  and  retreats  from  it 
at  one  and  the  same  time,  —  the  apparent  contradiction 


388  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

must  be  explained  by  the  nature  of  capital  itself. 
There  must  be  some  kind  of  capital  with  which  gov- 
ernment never  interferes  in  any  circumstances  what- 
ever. Now,  if  we  can  find  that  there  actually  exists 
precisely  this  kind  of  capital,  —  that  is,  a  kind  which 
government  always  leaves  alone,  and  which  it  must 
leave  alone,  —  then  it  will  be  plain  that  the  contradic- 
tion in  the  law  is  purely  apparent,  and  is  really  no 
contradiction  at  all.  Is  there  such  kind  of  capital, 
and  where  is  it  to  be  found  ? 

We  answer  unhesitatingly  that  there  is,  and  that 
it  is  to  be  found  everywhere,  in  the  most  developed 
and  undeveloped  societies  alike,  and  in  the  largest 
of  quantities  in  the  most  civilized  states.  It  is  the 
capital  used  for  the  creation  of  product  the  value  of 
which  is  largely  determined  by  contact  in  the  process 
of  creation  with  the  particular  personality  of  the  crea- 
tor. Some  products  are  more  highly  desirable  than 
others  because  of  the  superior  excellence  of  the  work- 
man. It  matters  little  what  the  product  may  be,  or 
whether  the  desirability  be  determined  by  the  utility 
or  the  beauty  of  the  object.  All  that  is  needed  to 
prevent  government  from  limiting  the  private  use  of 
capital  is  that  such  private  use  shall  be  purely  indi- 
vidual. In  the  ordinary  custom  and  trade  of  social 
life,  men  prefer  the  work  of  some  individuals  to  that 
of  others.  The  things  created  by  the  superior  crafts- 
manship of  one  artist  are  more  desirable,  whether 
because  of  their  excellence  of  art  or  of  use,  than 
those  created  by  another.  But  it  is  clear  that  this 
excellence  is  a  product  of  individual  capacity,  and 
depends  upon  the  mixture  of  the  labor  of  a  particular 
individual  with  the  thing  produced. 


IX  THE  LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  389 

Let  us  say  that  two  shoemakers  are  supplied  with 
tools  and  material  of  precisely  similar  kinds.  The 
shoes  created  by  one  of  them  will  be  far  more  desir- 
able than  those  created  by  the  other.  The  superior- 
ity may  pertain  to  the  excellence  of  the  shoes  in  use, 
or  in  beauty,  or  in  both.  But  the  value  will  be  de- 
termined by  the  mixture  with  the  capital  used  of 
the  individual  ability  of  the  workman.  To  draw  out 
this  ability  to  its  highest  expression  the  workman 
must  be  left  alone.  In  just  so  far  as  any  attempt  is 
made  to  mix  his  labor  with  that  of  others,  will  the 
excellence  of  the  product  be  diminished.  An  effort 
to  socialize  such  production  would  be  absurd  on  its 
face.  The  term  would  be  self-contradictory,  for  the 
essential  quality  of  the  product  would  lie  in  the  in- 
dividuality stamped  upon  it  by  its  maker. 

The  man  who  possesses  wealth,  in  a  free  commu- 
nity, may  use  his  wealth  for  any  purposes  he  may 
desire,  so  long  as  he  does  not  restrict  like  liberty 
in  others.  He  can  use  it,  if  he  so  desires,  for  the 
creation  of  any  form  of  wealth  he  pleases.  Of  the 
new  wealth  thus  produced  he  can  dispose  in  what- 
ever manner  he  likes.  He  can  retain  it  for  his  own 
enjoyment;  he  can  bestow  it  upon  others;  he  can 
trade  it  for  anything  with  which  another  may  desire 
to  part.  The  wealth  used  in  the  creation  of  the  new 
object  was  his  own.  The  new  object,  itself,  is  his 
own  absolutely.  We  have  here,  therefore,  a  form  of 
capital  which  government  can  never  restrain,  how- 
ever remotely.  If  government  be  permitted  to  touch 
it  in  any  manner  whatever,  or  for  any  purpose  at  all, 
it  can  only  be  with  the  freely  given  consent  and 
approval  of  the  individual  in  whose  hands  the  capital 


390  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

at  first  is  found.  An  attempt  to  limit  the  purely 
private  function  of  such  capital  could  end  only  in 
the  destruction  of  the  method  of  production  thus 
practised.  And  unless  we  can  conceive  that  men 
can  take  pleasure  in  thwarting  their  own  desires,  we 
cannot  conceive  that  government  can  unite  with  this 
kind  of  capital  save  for  assisting  the  process  of  in- 
dividuation,  and  that  kind  of  contact  is  really  no 
contact  at  all.  It  is  really  the  disappearance  of 
government,  altogether,  in  the  power  of  the  individual 
—  a  disappearance  which  has  led  some  thinkers 
to  the  conclusion  that  individuation,  and  not  sociali- 
zation, is  the  method  by  which  social  forces  flow 
toward  the  open,  free  state  of  equilibrium. 

But  this  idea  of  social  motion  arises  from  a  false 
perception  of  the  true  relations  of  government  to 
capital,  and  from  the  lack  of  a  knowledge  of  the 
method  of  capitalization  and  its  law,  which  we  have 
suggested  in  this  book  as  being  most  probably  the 
true  one.  If  it  were  true  that  the  only  kind  of  capi- 
tal open  to  observation  were  of  that  kind  we  have 
here  considered,  then  it  should  be  perfectly  clear  that 
individuation  is  the  process  by  which  the  forces  of 
capitalization  bear  societies  forward  to  equality.  But 
we  know,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  this  perfectly  free 
capital  is  not  the  only  kind.  And  we  know,  further- 
more, that  at  the  present,  and  in  the  United  States, 
it  is  comparatively  small  in  quantity  as  compared 
with  capital  susceptible  of  socialization.  The  theory 
of  individuation  will  not,  therefore,  account  for  all 
the  facts  we  see.  Nor  yet  will  the  theory  of  so- 
cialization account  for  them.  But  the  theory  we 
have  here  proposed,  as  reduced  to  general  terms  in 


IX  THE  LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  391 

the  formula  of  the  law  of  capitalization  we  have  here 
developed,  seems,  to  us  at  least,  satisfactorily  to  ac- 
count for  all  the  facts  we  see,  and  to  unite  the  two 
apparently  conflicting  theories  into  one  harmonious 
whole.  It  would  seem  to  us  that  the  theory  of 
socialization  is  faulty  because  of  the  presence  of 
facts  which  plainly  contradict  it.  And  the  same  may 
be  said  of  the  theory  of  individuation. 

It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  there  is  much  strength 
in  both  theories  —  that  both  are  incontestably  sup- 
ported by  the  presence  of  many  facts.  Nor  is  it  to 
be  denied  that  there  is  much  weakness  in  both,  for 
both  are  incontrovertibly  broken  down  by  the  pres- 
ence of  facts  of  another  order.  In  this  situation  the 
only  rational  conclusion  to  which  we  can  come  is 
that  there  is  some  truth  in  both,  and  some  error  in 
both.  We  have  presented  in  our  law  of  capitalization 
a  general  fact,  the  perception  of  which  harmonizes 
the  apparent  contradiction,  while  it  illuminates  the 
point  of  contact  at  which  both  are  indisputably  true. 
And  if  this  general  fact  be  truly  denned  by  the  gen- 
eralization we  have  formulated,  then  we  have  found 
that  law  the  discovery  of  which  is  the  end  of  social 
science. 

If,  now,  we  look  abroad  at  the  relations  of  govern- 
ment to  that  kind  of  capital  which  it  leaves  alone,  we 
will  find  our  position  strengthened  at  numerous  points. 
It  is  scarcely  needful  to  say  that  the  artist  is  the  sole 
producer  whom  government  never  seeks  to  touch 
save  as  a  solicitor  for  his  favor.  Whether  the  artist 
produces  pictures,  books,  sculpture,  or  things  that  are 
useful  apart  for  their  beauty,  he  has  been  ever  the 
adopted  child  of  the  ruler,  even  when  the  ruler  is  a 


392  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

despot.  Art  of  every  kind  flourishes  as  wealth  is 
diffused,  because  the  capacity  of  the  individual  for 
production  is  increased  as  capital  is  placed  in  his 
hands.  We  should  say,  rather,  that  diverse  capacity 
for  production  is  encouraged  by  the  possession  of 
wealth  in  the  hands  of  increasingly  large  numbers. 
As  men  retreat  from  the  bare  subsistence  point  of 
labor,  they  are  free  to  choose  occupations  congenial 
to  them  and  in  which,  at  the  same  time,  they  are 
most  proficient.  And  it  is  very  probable  that  those 
occupations  in  which  men  take  most  delight  are  the 
occupations  for  which  they  are  best  adapted. 

It  is  obviously  true  that  all  men  are  not  equally 
adapted  to  every  occupation.  But  it  is  probably  true  • 
that  all  men,  normally  healthy,  have  capacities  which 
are  excellent  in  some  one  way.  And  it  is  obvious, 
also,  that  if  all  men  were  once  removed  from  the 
necessity  of  devoting  most  of  their  time  to  labor  ex- 
pended for  purposes  of  bare  subsistence,  especially 
in  their  childhood  and  youth,  when  choice  of  occupa- 
tion is  freest  and  surest,  they  would  probably  select 
the  occupation  for  which  they  are  best  adapted. 

This  process  we  observe,  even  now,  when  natural 
selection  operates  so  as  to  force  men  into  occupa- 
tions not  congenial.  But  natural  selection  does  more 
than  this.  It  compels  some  men  to  remain  in  occu- 
pations for  which  they  are  least  adapted,  and  forces 
others  to  take  up  occupations  for  which  they  are  not 
adapted  at  all.  But  in  spite  of  this  forceful  fact,  we 
find  men  with  aptitude  for  special  occupations  seek- 
ing them  in  the  leisure  time  won  by  work  in  the  unde- 
sirable ones.  All  men  do  not  succeed  equally  because 
of  variation  in  capacity.  But  the  fact  that  numerous 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  393 

signal  successes  are  made  in  this  very  way  is  an  evi- 
dence of  the  more  remote  fact  that,  with  more  equal 
opportunities,  the  number  of  signal  successes  would 
be  proportionally  large.  Natural  selection  forces 
many  men  into  occupations  which  they  do  not  like, 
and  from  among  these  it  selects  many  for  great 
successes  in  work  done  during  the  hours  in  which 
they  are  free.  And  if  we  conceive  of  a  society  in 
which  the  uncongenial  occupation  exacts  increas- 
ingly smaller  effort,  and  yields  to  the  individual 
increasingly  large  returns  of  wealth,  we  can  readily 
conceive  of  natural  selection  producing  ever  enlarging 
numbers  of  men  who  succeed  in  pursuits  to  which 
they  turn  in  their  leisure  from  motives  of  love.  In 
this  way  natural  selection,  developing  society  through 
the  forces  of  socialization,  also  develops  it  through 
the  forces  of  individuation  ;  and  the  first  process  is  the 
cause  of  the  second. 

But  this  development  is  really  no  more  than  the 
advance  of  government  upon  one  kind  of  capital  and 
its  retreat  from  another.  In  the  operations  of  purely 
private  capital  —  that  kind  which  government  cannot 
touch  —  competition  must  always  increase,  and  the 
force  of  natural  selection  must  ever  produce  and 
develop  higher  and  higher  degrees  of  excellence  in 
production,  and  increasingly  large  numbers  of  men 
in  whom  excellence  is  found.  But  while  this  kind  of 
competition  must  ever  enlarge,  competition  of  the 
reverse  character  must  ever  diminish.  For  as  the 
diffusion  of  wealth  progresses,  government  areas  of 
capital  expand,  and  so  long  as  diffusion  advances, 
government  must  take  over  increasingly  large  areas 
of  capital  over  which  it  can  be  found  to  exercise  con- 


394  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

trol.  To  this  action  there  must  be  some  end.  It 
cannot  go  on  forever.  Where,  then,  must  it  stop  ? 
Where,  if  not  at  that  point  at  which  government  has 
united  with  all  the  capital  with  which  it  can  unite  ? 
When  this  point  is  reached,  economic  social  forces  will 
be  in  equilibrium  and  not  before.  And  what  force 
is  it  that  alone  can  determine  when  this  state  has 
been  reached  ?  Is  it  not  the  perception  that  there 
can  be  no  further  diffusion  of  wealth  by  government 
action  ?  Is  it  not  clear  that  when  government  inter- 
ference with  capital  would  serve  only  to  hinder,  rather 
than  help,  the  very  process  which  would  be  most 
desired  of  all,  government  interference  would  stop 
of  its  ozvn  force  ? 

The  line  beyond  which  socialization  of  capital  can- 
not conceivably  extend  is  drawn  by  no  doubtful 
circumstance.  It  is  drawn  by  the  most  vivid  and 
spontaneous  ideas  in  the  consciousness  of  living 
things  —  ideas  of  pleasure  and  ideas  of  pain.  It  is 
marked  with  as  much  certainty,  and  can  be  calcu- 
lated with  as  nice  precision,  as  the  orbit  of  a  planet 
the  relations  of  which  to  the  sun,  in  mass  and  dis- 
tance, are  perfectly  known  to  the  mathematician.  No 
mysterious  power  of  intellect  is  needed  to  say  whether 
any  particular  kind  of  production  is  capable  of  sociali- 
zation or  not.  The  proof  of  this  assertion  is  found, 
not  in  theoretical  treatises  upon  production,  but  in 
the  actual  socialization  of  all  kinds  of  capital  sus- 
ceptible to  this  method.  And  if  we  know  what  kind 
of  capital  is  susceptible  and  what  kind  is  not,  the 
problem  is  made  clear  to  the  view  of  the  simplest 
intellect. 

With  the  equilibrium  we  have  sketched  in  force,  it 


IX  THE  LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  395 

is  manifest  that  the  quantity  of  wealth  must  ever 
increase  with  the  capacity  for  enjoyment  found  in 
each  individual,  and  with  the  growing  total  capacity 
caused  by  increase  of  population.  The  method  of 
division  would  then  be  in  equilibrium  with  the  method 
of  production.  This  equilibrium  could  take  no  form 
other  than  one  in  which  each  individual  would  receive 
a  share  of  government  product  equal  to  tfie  share 
received  by  every  other  individual ;  or,  which  would 
amount  to  the  same  thing,  each  would  have  a  right 
to  an  equal  share  if  he  desired  to  take  it  after  he 
had  performed  the  required  labor.  Or,  to  remove 
the  proposition  a  step  farther  back,  each  would  have 
a  right  to  the  performance  of  the  labor  which  would 
give  him  the  right  to  the  equal  share.  Any  further 
change  in  the  relations  of  government  to  capital  could 
only  result  in  a  disturbance  of  the  equilibrium,  and 
such  disturbance  would  be,  to  the  moral  sense  of  all, 
the  most  highly  repugnant  social  idea  conceivable. 
Private  production  and  private  capitalization,  limited 
by  this  equilibrium,  would  then  be  free,  to  the  highest 
conceivable  degree,  to  develop  by  lines  which  the  in- 
creasing variety  and  the  increasing  quantity  of  wealth 
would  encourage. 

In  current  discussions  of  the  socialization  of  capital 
men  suffer  under  a  confusion  of  ideas,  because  they 
deal  with  purely  imaginary  facts  rather  than  with 
facts  as  they  really  exist.  Thus  the  advocates  of 
individuation,  or  of  unrestrained  competition,  believe 
that  the  gratification  of  desires  will  tend  to  eliminate 
the  desires  which  are  gratified ;  and  the  advocates  of 
socialization  believe  that  the  prevention  of  gratifica- 
tion will  have  the  effect  of  making  men  altruistic 


396  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

rather  than  selfish.  But  this  kind  of  theory  is  based 
upon  pure  imagination,  and  it  is  nowhere  justified  by 
facts.  The  poor  man  always  desires  to  be  rich,  and 
the  rich  man  always  desires  to  be  richer.  We  can- 
not construct  a  theory  of  social  growth  upon  ideas 
of  what  ought  to  be.  Perhaps  no  two  men  agree  pre- 
cisely as  to  an  ideal  state  of  society.  Once  that  we 
open  up  the  question  of  what  ought  to  be,  we  find 
ourselves  placed  in  a  labyrinth  of  impossibilities  from 
which  there  is  no  escape. 

The  nature  of  a  state  which  ought  to  be  will  depend 
very  much  upon  the  ideas  of  the  individual  who  is 
constructing  it.  Some  men  are  highly  satisfied  with 
things  as  they  now  exist.  Some  are  convinced  that 
everything  now  existing  is  essentially  wrong.  Others 
would  change  some  conditions  and  leave  some  condi- 
tions alone.  If  we  permit  questions  of  what  should 
be  to  enter  into  our  theories  of  social  life,  we  may  as 
well  rest  content  with  the  position  that  all  men  should 
be  lofty  gods,  sitting  at  tables  of  jasper,  and  drinking 
nectar  from  tankards  filled  in  some  miraculously 
mechanical  way  determined  by  the  will  of  the  con- 
sumer. Theories  of  this  kind  are  as  easy  of  con- 
struction by  the  unlettered  beggar  as  by  the  most 
opulent  philosopher.  But  they  are  all  of  a  kind. 
They  have  very  little  association  with  facts.  They 
are  to  true  social  science  what  the  ancient  cosmogony 
is  to  true  natural  science.  They  are  of  high  value  to 
true  social  science  as  an  indication  of  moral  progress, 
but  valuable  only  in  that  way.  They  are  not  causes 
of  social  progress,  but  effects.  And  we  must  not 
look  into  these  theories  in  the  hope  of  discovering 
the  character  of  social  motion. 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  397 

It  is  illogical  to  hold  that  any  socialization  of  capi- 
tal will  entirely  destroy  economic  competition.  We 
cannot  conceive  that  men  will  go  on  working,  when 
the  highest  incentive  to  labor  is  taken  away.  We  do 
not  find  this  to  be  the  fact  at  present.  There  is  no 
conceivable  reason  why  it  should  ever  be  found  to  be 
the  fact.  The  scientific  man,  who  labors  incessantly 
to  discover  a  great  truth  of  nature,  would  cease  his 
effort  were  he  once  convinced  that  his  labor  were 
hopeless.  The  man  who  loves  wealth  for  the  liberty 
it  gives  him  would  make  no  effort  to  secure  larger 
possessions  if  he  were  once  satisfied  that  no  amount 
of  effort  could  possibly  enrich  him  further.  The 
contrary  would  be  the  fact.  He  would  endeavor  to 
secure  himself  in  the  possession  of  the  largest  pos- 
sible sum  of  wealth  by  the  least  possible  effort.  Men 
actually  do  this  now.  There  is  not  much  reason  for 
believing  that  they  will  ever  do  otherwise.  Questions 
of  conscience,  or  moral  obligation,  have  nothing  to  do 
with  the  case.  No  matter  how  sensitive  may  be  a 
man's  moral  sense,  he  will  seek  easement  of  his  state 
by  conduct  which  his  moral  sense  approves. 

In  any  social  state  in  which  there  could  be  no  com- 
petition, rewarded  by  an  increase  of  wealth  or  of 
power,  art  would  languish,  invention  would  cease, 
production  would  retrogress,  science  would  falter, 
capacity  would  diminish,  and  social  forces  would  flow 
backwards.  Such  a  state  would  not  build  up  moral 
character  to  broader  proportions,  but  would  break  it 
down.  Instead  of  producing  men  whose  moral  sensi- 
bility would  become  increasingly  acute,  it  would  pro- 
duce men  in  whom  moral  sensibility  would  become 
progressively  obtuse.  The  phalanstery  idea  of  social 


398  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

progress  has  been,  therefore,  always  repugnant  to 
men  of  every  kind.  And  without  competition,  and 
competition  of  a  very  active  and  incentive  kind,  the 
phalanstery  is  the  only  norm  to  which  socialization 
can  be  seen  to  tend. 

It  has  been  frequently  asked,  Why  should  men  strive 
to  invent  new  and  easier  devices  for  labor  when  such 
invention  could  not  be  seen  directly  to  benefit  them- 
selves ?  Why,  indeed  ?  Why  should  a  man,  from  any 
conceivable  moral  motive,  take  most  delight  in  work- 
ing all  day  long  at  a  machine  which  turns  out  shoes, 
when  he  could  write  romances,  or  paint  pictures, 
which  would  bring  him  returns  of  wealth  vastly 
greater  than  his  labor  of  shoemaking  ?  Why  should 
any  conceivable  moral  motive  compel  an  individual 
to  prefer  to  lay  bricks,  while  he  had  a  natural  capac- 
ity for  designing  highly  beautiful  fashions  in  coats, 
or  for  constructing  a  device  which  would  simplify  the 
labor  of  preparing  food  for  the  table  ?  And  why 
should  the  state  compel  an  individual  to  lay  bricks, 
when  he  desired  to  use  the  wealth  in  his  possession 
to  create  coats  which  would  bring  him  larger  returns 
of  wealth  than  the  state  could  ever  pay  him  for  his 
capacity  as  a  bricklayer?  If  he  could  secure  more 
wealth  by  laying  bricks  than  by  any  other  method  of 
industry  (and  wealth  was  the  thing  he  most  desired), 
we  can  readily  conceive  him  continuing  to  lay  bricks 
of  his  own  free  will  and  impulse.  But  we  can 
scarcely  conceive  him  doing  so  when  there  was  a 
big  demand  for  his  services  in  another  direction,  and 
no  compulsion  whatever  forcing  him  to  remain  in 
the  occupation  of  the  bricklayer. 

We   need   not  be   troubled  with   the   question   of 


IX  THE  LAW  OF   CAPITALIZATION  399 

what  the  state  would  do  in  the  matter  of  inventions 
in  capital  of  a  kind  that  is  susceptible  to  the  process 
of  socialization,  as,  for  example,  an  invention  which 
would  simplify  the  manufacture  of-  shoes  by  machin- 
ery. We  need  go  to  no  imaginary  state  of  morals  or 
of  industry  to  answer  the  question.  The  answer  is 
found  in  the  present  conduct  of  the  state.  Govern- 
ment protects  the  individual  in  the  enjoyment  of  the 
fruits  of  his  genius.  And  government  will  never  be 
able  to  do  anything  else  unless  invention  is  to  lan- 
guish. But  government  does  not  now  protect  any- 
body in  perpetuity.  It  gives  to  every  creator  a 
reasonable  compensation  for  his  genius.  It  relieves 
him  of  the  necessity  of  continuous  labor  in  occupa- 
tions that  are  distasteful. 

It  can  do  no  more  than  this  without  taking  away 
the  incentive  to  genius.  For  if  an  individual  is  to  be 
left  the  sole  master  of  an  idea  discovered  by  him,  he 
may  find  that  his  own  liberty  is  painfully  restricted 
by  like  liberty  in  others.  The  individual  who  would 
discover  that  oysters  were  good  to  eat  would  hardly 
serve  himself  by  insisting  that  none  else  should  be 
allowed  to  eat  oysters  without  his  permission.  For 
another  might  discover  that  mutton  was  a  very  de- 
sirable article  of  food.  The  discoverer  of  oysters 
would  then  have  his  oysters  ad  libitum,  but  he  would 
be  minus  mutton ;  and  mutton  might  very  easily  be 
conceived  as  being  more  desirable  than  oysters. 
Furthermore,  it  might  be  found  that  the  discoverer 
of  mutton  would  not  care  to  trade  his  mutton  for 
oysters ;  and  hence  he  would  have  a  very  distinct 
advantage  over  his  neighbor. 

But  while  all  this  might  be  very  true,  we  cannot 


40O  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

imagine  a  discoverer  of  oysters,  or  of  mutton,  sur- 
rendering his  idea  without  compensation  of  any  kind 
beyond  that  found  in  the  enjoyment  of  his  particular 
share  of  food.  In  other  words,  we  should  hardly 
seek  for  an  incentive  to  invention  of  any  kind  in 
motives  of  pure  philanthropy.  We  can  imagine  that 
this  motive  might  be  prevalent  and  very  powerful  in 
a  very  rich  and  very  free  community.  But  we  must 
now  allow  ourselves  to  consider  this  motive  as  the 
present  cause  of  social  progress.  And  if  it  should  be 
imagined  as  existing,  in  an  ideal  state,  it  can  only  be 
conceived  as  the  effect  of  the  process  of  socialization 
and  individuation  we  see  going  forward  at  present. 
What  is  true  of  one  kind  of  invention  or  art  is  true  of 
every  kind. 

While  the  state  limits  the  power  of  the  individual 
over  his  individual  invention,  it  does  so  only  because 
the  individual  finds  that  he  is  better  served  by  such 
limitation  than  by  the  reverse  action.  But,  apart 
from  new  ideas,  the  state  can  never  limit  the  freedom 
of  the  individual  in  the  use  of  capital  to  create  wealth 
which  shall  bear  upon  it  the  stamp  of  his  personal 
skill.  As  we  have  already  seen,  the  only  contact 
with  capital  of  this  kind  possible  to  the  state  is  the 
facilitation  of  the  private  use  of  capital,  and  when 
this  contact  becomes  operative,  the  power  of  the 
state  disappears  in  the  power  of  the  individual.  It 
should  be  clear  from  these  premises  that  the  increase 
of  wealth  by  social  methods  should  act  so  as  to  in- 
crease the  quantity  of  wealth  produced  by  individual 
methods ;  that  as  men  become  socially  controlled  in 
the  use  of  one  kind  of  capital,  they  become  individu- 
ally free  in  the  use  of  another;  that  while  govern- 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  401 

ment  is  advancing  toward  capital  in  one  direction,  it 
is  retreating  from  capital  in  another ;  and  that  while 
this  compound  motion  proceeds,  wealth  is  diffusing 
itself  over  ever  broadening  areas  of  men,  and  the 
quantity  of  it  perpetually  grows. 

In  the  beginning  of  our  chapter  on  "  Social  Ki- 
netics "  we  have  suggested  that  as  the  laws  of  social 
growth  are  universal,  we  should  find  .that  the  equilib- 
rium of  social  men  should  be  similar  to  that  of  social 
bees.  And  this  we  have  really  discovered  to  be  the 
fact.  All  the  capital  used  socially  by  bees  is  con- 
trolled by  the  group.  There  is  no  free  capital  in 
bee  communities  because  bees  do  not  use  capital  for 
purposes  other  than  of  food.  And  as  the  desires  of 
the  bees  for  food  are  uniform  and  not  diversiform,  as 
among  men,  there  is  no  force  of  desire  which  can 
develop  diverse  or  individual  methods  of  production 
or  service.  If  such  diversity  of  desire  were  present 
in  bees,  we  should  find  that  free  capital  would  exist 
in  these  societies  as  it  exists  in  societies  of  men. 
And  this  difference  between  man  and  bee  is  found  to 
lie  in  the  high  complexity  of  the  nervous  and  alimen- 
tary apparatus  of  the  man  as  compared  with  that  of 
the  insect.  Among  bees  there  is  no  competition  be- 
cause there  is  no  demand  for  product  which  the  gov- 
ernment cannot  create.  But  among  men  there  is  no 
conceivable  limit  to  the  demand  for  product  which 
the  state  could  not  possibly  create  by  any  conceivable 
method. 

We  cannot  conceive  of  a  group  in  which  state  con- 
trol of  all  capital  can  disappear  in  individual  control. 
We  cannot  do  this  because  all  conceptions  of  the  dis- 
appearance of  state  control  imply  a  destruction  of 


402  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

the  social  character  of  man.  We  can  conceive  of  com- 
munity-power and  community-control  as  vanishing 
from  a  society  of  bees ;  but  when  we  do  this,  we  do 
no  more  than  conceive  of  the  bees  lapsing  from  the 
social  to  the  solitary  state.  And  with  this  lapse  will 
disappear  all  the  basis  and  material  of  social  science 
as  applied  to  bees.  We  could  then  study  the  char- 
acters of  the  individual  bee  and  discover  its  motives 
and  its  action.  Competition  of  a  very  active  and  in- 
tense kind  exists  among  animals  which  live  in  a  soli- 
tary state.  This  competition  is  practised  between 
the  solitary  animal  and  every  other  animal,  social  or 
solitary,  whose  desires  conflict  with  those  of  the  solitary 
one.  Competition  is  then  a  struggle  to  the  death. 
It  may  be  a  passive  or  an  active  struggle,  but  its 
issue  is  life  or  death.  Among  men,  the  issue  is  not 
one  of  life  but  one  of  wealth.  We  can  conceive  of 
the  state,  through  forces  of  natural  selection,  elimi- 
nating that  kind  of  competition  which  might  end  in 
the  death  of  an  individual,  and  we  know  that  moral 
force  is  acting  very  powerfully  in  that  direction.  But 
we  cannot  conceive  of  the  state,  or  any  other  power, 
eliminating  that  competition  the  issue  of  which  is 
perceived  to  be,  not  death,  but  larger  amplitudes  of 
life  for  ever  enlarging  numbers  of  individuals. 

Thus  we  observe  that  our  law  of  capitalization  uni- 
fies the  diverse  facts  observed  not  alone  in  societies 
of  men,  but  in  societies  of  other  kinds ;  that  it  har- 
monizes diverse  ideas  of  social  science ;  that  it  dis- 
closes the  causes  of  social  facts  to  lie  in  desires  of 
men  which  are  an  inalienable  part  of  their  vital 
nature ;  while  at  the  same  time  it  provides  a  theory 
which  would  seem  rationally  to  explain  those  growing 


ix  THE  LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  403 

moral  wants  of  civilized  men,  accounted  to  be  the 
character  in  man  that  is  distinctly  human. 

In  reversion  to  the  subject  of  capitalization  in  the 
United  States,  we  may  here  consider  the  effects  being 
worked  out  by  the  forces  at  play.  The  economic 
revolution  going  forward  in  America  is  accompanied 
by  a  political  and  moral  revolution.  The  government 
is  changing  so  as  to  adjust  itself  to  the  new  economic 
conditions  which  have  followed  the  old  regime  of 
open  competition  in  industries  which  were  susceptible 
to  the  socializing  method  of  capital.  Changes  of  every 
kind  are  more  rapid  in  the  United  States  than  in 
New  Zealand,  because  the  form  of  government  in 
New  Zealand  is  in  advance  of  its  power  of  production, 
and  of  the  complexity  of  its  capital.  But  in  the  United 
States  the  revolutionary  process,  for  this  very  reason, 
must  carry  the  expansion  of  government  to  higher 
areas  of  capital  than  those  observed  even  in  New 
Zealand.  Instruments  of  production  in  the  United 
States  are  infinitely  better  suited  to  the  change  from 
private  to  public  function,  and  because  of  this,  the 
moral  ideas  of  the  community  have  progressed  farther 
than  in  the  South  Sea  democracy.  Government  must 
hence  take  over  comparatively  large  areas  of  capital 
owing  to  the  superiority  of  America  in  the  quantity 
and  variety  of  wealth  of  all  kinds. 

In  the  United  States  there  are  comparatively  few 
individuals  who  are  comparatively  rich.  But  these 
form  the  bulk  of  the  people  who  are  demanding 
government  interference.  They  include  well-to-do 
non-capitalists,  small  capitalists  who  are  not  partners 
in  compound  enterprise,  and  even  large  independent 
capitalists  who  believe  their  well-being  threatened  by 


404  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

the  new  method.  How  this  revolution  must  act,  when 
carried  to  its  inevitable  end,  can  be  seen  in  the  example 
of  the  French  revolution,  which,  although  compara- 
tively rapid  and  violent,  has  produced  results  precisely 
similar  to  those  now  in  process  of  accomplishment 
in  America.  In  France  the  sudden  seizure  by  the 
many  of  capital  in  land  held  by  the  few  has  carried 
France  to  a  social  state  far  beyond  that  of  Germany, 
of  Italy,  of  Russia,  and  of  all  European  states  except 
England.  And  if  England  is  an  exception,  it  is  only 
because  capitalization  in  England  has  been  progres- 
sively developed  along  lines  other  than  those  of  land. 

In  England,  therefore,  land  has  not  been  the  ful- 
crum used  by  the  power  of  the  people  in  changing 
the  government  and  in  causing  progressive  diffusion 
of  wealth.  The  method  which  has  helped  France 
would  not  have  helped  England  in  such  immediately 
perceptible  degree.  Hence  we  find  that  moral  ideas 
as  to  land  are  not  of  extraordinary  force  in  England, 
as  they  are,  for  example,  in  Ireland,  where  land  is  the 
principal  implement  of  capital.  France,  in  many  re- 
spects, was,  before  the  revolution,  no  farther  advanced 
economically  than  was  Germany.  But  after  the  revo- 
lution, which  was  really  only  an  extension  of  property 
right  in  capital  from  a  small  number  of  rulers  to  a 
very  much  larger  one,  France  leaped  forward  in  a 
degree  measurable  by  this  very  change. 

We  could  conceive  of  a  violent  revolution  in  Eng- 
land by  which  that  nation  would  be  carried  beyond 
the  present  state  of  America.  But  in  the  United 
States  we  observe  a  moral  sense  far  more  acute,  as 
regards  capital,  than  is  found  in  the  mother  country. 
This  moral  perception  gives  rise  to  a  demand  for  gov- 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  405 

eminent  interference  with  capital  not  common  in 
Britain.  But  it  will  be  observed,  too,  that  this  de- 
mand in  America  for  government  control  does  not 
pertain  to  capital  in  land,  but  to  capital  in  instruments 
other  than  land.  This  is  owing  to  the  comparatively 
free  distribution  of  land  and  to  the  vastness  of  its 
quantity.  Government  must,  of  course,  rise  to  the 
control  of  land,  but  only  of  such  land  as  is  inextricably 
associated  with  production,  other  than  agricultural, 
and  with  circulation.  Contact  with  land  of  these  kinds 
must  be  immediate.  Contact  with  land  used  for  agri- 
cultural purposes  would  follow  because  of  the  social 
character  of  the  largest  part  of  agricultural  produc- 
tion. But  manufacturing  capital  will  be  the  primary 
fulcrum,  and  agricultural  capital  the  secondary  one. 

We  can  thus  conceive  ourselves  safe  in  the  asser- 
tion that  the  most  rapid  action  of  the  law  of  capital- 
ization is  found  in  that  civil  group  in  which  the 
instruments  of  capitalization  are  developed  to  the 
highest  complexity.  And  the  implication  in  this  as- 
sertion —  namely,  that  the  past  and  the  present  are 
sure  indications  of  the  future  —  will  commend  itself  to 
our  reason  as  the  most  rational  conclusion  that  can  be 
drawn. 

In  summing  up  the  action  of  the  law  of  capitaliza- 
tion we  may  survey  that  action  in  its  theoretical 
phases.  If  we  analyze  the  formula  of  the  law,  we 
will  find  that  it  presents  three  possible  theorems. 
Areas  over  which  government  and  capital  are  united 
vary  when :  — 

I.  With  the  diffusion  of  wealth  fixed,  its  quantity 
is  variable. 

II.  With  the  quantity  fixed,  the  diffusion  is  variable. 


406  THE   LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

III.  With  the  quantity  variable,  the  diffusion  also 
is  variable. 

These  major  theorems  may  be  divided  into  eight 
minor  theorems  as  follow  :  — 

When,  with  the  diffusion  fixed:  (i)  the  quantity 
increases,  and  (2)  the  quantity  decreases. 

When,  with  the  quantity  fixed:  (i)  the  diffusion 
increases,  and  (2)  the  diffusion  decreases. 

When,  with  the  quantity  and  diffusion  variable : 
(i)the  quantity  increases  and  the  diffusion  decreases  ; 

(2)  the  diffusion  increases  and  the  quantity  decreases ; 

(3)  quantity  and  diffusion  decrease  together ;  and  (4) 
quantity  and  diffusion  increase  together. 

Taking  up  the  theorems  in  the  order  here  laid 
down,  we  find  that  if  the  premises  of  the  first  minor 
theorem  be  true,  —  that  is,  if  the  diffusion  of  wealth 
be  fixed  and  its  quantity  increases,  —  government 
unites  with  capital  over  contracting  areas  because 
product  multiplies  faster  than  capital,  and  the  quan- 
tity of  capital  in  the  hands  of  the  rulers  diminishes 
as  compared  with  the  total  quantity  of  wealth.  It  is 
evident  that  there  is  no  change  in  the  method  of  gov- 
ernment in  these  circumstances,  for  political  power 
depends  upon  capital  power,  and  when  wealth  is 
diffused,  political  power  is  diffused  with  it.  The 
method  of  government  cannot  change  so  long  as  all 
individuals  grow  wealthier  in  proportion  to  their  pos- 
sessions, and  there  is  no  levelling  of  individual  posses- 
sions toward  equality. 

If  the  second  minor  premise  be  true,  — that  is,  if  the 
diffusion  remains  fixed  while  the  quantity  of  wealth 
decreases,  —  government  areas  of  capital  will  expand, 
because  the  quantity  of  capital  will  increase  as  com- 


IX  THE  LAW   OF  CAPITALIZATION  407 

pared  with  the  total  quantity  of  wealth.  The  proof 
of  this  theorem  is  implied  in  the  proof  of  the  preced- 
ing one. 

If,  now,  the  quantity  of  wealth  be  fixed  and  the 
diffusion  increases,  government  areas  of  capital  ex- 
pand because  the  method  of  government  changes  so 
as  to  enlarge  the  number  of  rulers  as  compared  with 
the  total  population.  Secondly,  if,  while  the  quan- 
tity remains  fixed,  the  diffusion  decreases,  government 
areas  of  capital  contract  because  the  number  of  rulers 
diminishes  as  compared  with  the  total  population. 

The  proof  of  the  four  remaining  minor  theorems 
is  implied  in  the  proof  of  the  first  four.  If  the  quan- 
tity increases  and  the  diffusion  decreases,  government 
recedes  from  progressively  larger  numbers  of  indi- 
viduals as  compared  with  the  total  population.  If 
the  diffusion  increases  and  the  quantity  decreases,  we 
approach  pure  communism,  for  as  each  individual 
becomes  more  powerful  politically,  he  will  use  his 
political  power  to  further  his  economic  ends,  and 
these  can  be  best  served  by  common  right  of  use  to 
the  needful  wealth.  If  the  quantity  and  diffusion 
decrease  together,  government  will  tend  to  disappear 
and  the  process  will  end  in  the  death  of  the  society 
as  a  political  group.  The  remaining  minor  theorem 
is  demonstrated  in  our  treatment  of  the  industrial 
and  political  changes  going  on  in  progressive  socie- 
ties at  the  present  time,  particularly  in  the  United 
States,  wherein  the  quantity  and  diffusion  of  wealth 
are  advancing  at  one  and  the  same  time. 

The  action  of  the  law  of  capitalization  may,  and 
probably  does,  seem  to  be  obscure  in  two  particulars. 
It  may  be  said,  first,  that  in  our  broadest  conception 


408  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

of  the  term  government,  —  that  is,  the  political  rulers 
of  a  realm  apart  from  the  mere  mechanism  of  govern- 
ment, —  we  include  the  capital  which  is  worked  up 
into  wealth  with  the  individual  stamp  upon  it.  A 
capitalist  who  uses  wealth  in  this  way  is,  it  may  be 
objected,  as  much  a  ruler  as  he  who  uses  capital  sus- 
ceptible of  socialization.  Therefore  government,  in 
the  broad  sense,  unites  not  only  with  social  capital 
but  with  individual  capital,  too.  The  second  obscur- 
ity lies  in  the  process  by  which  the  mechanism  of 
government  itself  is  forced  to  unite  with  such  capital 
as  is  really  socializable.  How  does  government 
naturally  take  over  the  instruments  of  production 
which  have  been  already  socialized  by  private 
methods  ?  For  it  may  be  said  that  it  is  possible  to 
conceive  that  private  socialization  shall  go  on  indefi- 
nitely even  in  spite  of  the  very  manifest  moral  ten- 
dency toward  unition.  Let  us  examine  first  into  the 
first-named  objection. 

It  is  true  that  the  artist  whose  product  is  made 
valuable  by  his  personal  contact  with  the  capital  used 
is,  or  may  be,  as  much  a  ruler  as  he  whose  capital  is 
of  the  social  kind.  But  it  should  be  clear  also  that 
his  relations  to  the  state  are  of  an  order  very  differ- 
ent from  that  of  all  other  producers,  whether  capi- 
talists or  not,  inasmuch  as  neither  his  labor  nor  his 
capital  can  ever  be  compounded  with  that  of  others. 
However  much  the  political  machinery  of  the  state 
may  interfere  with  the  labor  or  capital  of  others,  it 
can  never  interfere  with  him.  His  function  as  a 
ruler  is  distinct  from  his  function  as  a  capitalist,  at 
least  in  its  purely  economic  aspect.  If  he  is  a  ruler 
at  all,  he  can  only  rule  these  economic  activities  of 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  409 

the  group  which  are  based  upon  social  capital.  In 
other  words,  the  character  of  his  production  is  abso- 
lutely individual,  and  his  capital  power  is  greater  than 
that  of  the  state.  In  order  that  it  may  benefit  by  his 
use  of  capital,  the  state  must  surrender  its  power  into 
his  hands.  Whereas,  if  the  individual  who  uses 
socializable  capital  is  to  be  benefited,  he  must  surren- 
der his  power  into  the  hands  of  the  state. 

It  will  be  observed,  too,  that  the  power  of  the 
artist  increases  as  the  gap  widens  between  socializ- 
able and  individual,  or  non-socializable,  capital.  But 
the  width  of  this  gap  depends  upon  the  quantity, 
variety,  and  diffusion  of  the  wealth  possessed  by  the 
group ;  that  is  to  say,  it  depends  upon  the  complexity 
of  the  environment.  In  a  simple  society,  in  which 
capital  is  differentiated  in  a  very  low  degree,  the 
power  of  the  artistic  worker  would  be  correspondingly 
small.  As  capital  differentiates,  his  power  increases, 
and  he  is  removed  farther  and  farther  from  all  possi- 
bility of  political  interference  from  the  group.  His 
wealth  may  give  him  power  over  his  fellow-workers ; 
but  their  wealth,  however  great,  can  give  them  no 
power  over  him  either  in  the  production  or  distribu- 
tion of  the  things  he  creates.  And  such  political 
power  is  not  even  sought  or  desired  by  the  state, 
for  all  men  at  once  perceive  the  true  relations  of 
government  to  capital  of  this  kind.  In  other  words, 
it  is  in  this  respect,  and  only  in  this  respect,  that 
social  motion  is  assisted  by  forces  of  pure  individua- 
tion.  Thus  it  is  seen  that  economic  differentiation 
is  accompanied  by  political  differentiation  The 
individual  producer  must  ever  be  the  master  of  the 
state,  and  the  social  producer  must  ever  be  its  ser- 


410  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

vant ;  and  this  whether  we  consider  the  state  as 
being  the  mechanism  of  government,  the  political 
unity  of  the  group,  or  the  economic  code  by  which 
the  group  creates  and  diffuses  its  wealth.  Govern- 
ment, hence,  does  not  unite,  in  any  manner,  with  the 
capital  of  the  individual  when  used  individually, 
although  that  capital  confers  on  its  owner,  or  user,  a 
power  greater  than  that  associated  with  capital  of 
the  other  kind. 

The  second  obscurity  requires  somewhat  more 
lengthy  treatment.  To  clear  it  up,  we  must  consider 
the  growth  of  a  group  with  concern  to  the  differen- 
tiation of  capital  itself.  The  government  of  a  group 
with  a  movable  habitat  is  necessarily  simple.  That 
of  a  group  living  in  a  temporarily  fixed  environment 
is  comparatively  complex ;  while  that  of  a  group  in  a 
permanently  fixed  habitat  is  more  complex  still.  But 
comparative  fixture  of  habitat  only  means  compara- 
tively complex  environment,  or  comparatively  great 
and  widely  diffused  wealth.  Complexity  of  govern- 
ment always  accompanies  complexity  of  environment, 
because  political  growth  is  the  product  of  industrial 
growth.  In  this  causal  relation  of  government  to 
capital  will  be  found  the  explanation  we  are  seeking 
of  the  mechanical  process  by  which  socialized  private 
capital  must  pass  into  public  capital,  not  capital 
merely  controlled  in  its  uses  by  the  state,  but  public 
capital  in  its  true  sense ;  that  is,  capital  actually  used 
by  government  for  the  creation  or  diffusion  of  wealth. 
Let  us  consider  the  process  historically. 

In  a  simple  society  a  strip  of  land  will  be  used  by 
the  community  for  the  purpose  of  fetching  goods  to 
market.  This  tract  of  land  we  call  a  road.  If,  now, 


IX  THE   LAW   OF  CAPITALIZATION  411 

the  economic  system  of  the  group  is  simple,  the  con- 
tact of  the  state  with  the  road  will  be  slight.  The 
road  may  be  owned  by  a  private  person  or  by  a 
number  of  such  persons  who  might  be  supposed  to 
derive  from  its  use  a  certain  revenue.  In  a  group 
characterized  by  very  simple  capital,  we  can  suppose 
that  the  owners  of  the  strip  would  be  powerful 
enough  to  control  its  uses  not  only,  but  also  to  con- 
trol the  production  of  the  users  of  the  road.  But  as 
soon  as  we  suppose  that  capital  has  differentiated 
to  a  considerable  degree,  and  the  government  has 
undergone  a  similar  transformation,  we  must  conceive 
that  the  power  of  the  group  would  be  used  to  sepa- 
rate the  road  from  private  ownership  and  make  it 
purely  public  in  its  function  and  structure.  Once 
having  passed  into  the  public  category,  we  cannot 
conceive  that  the  road  would  ever  again  resume  its 
private  character.  Its  public  character  must,  on  the 
contrary,  become  organic  and  so  remain  as  long  as 
the  power  of  the  majority  be  conceived  as  being 
greater  than  that  of  the  minority,  and  that  power 
would  continue  to  grow  greater  because  of  the  growth 
in  quantity  and  diffusion  of  wealth. 

Let  us  now  suppose  that  the  character  of  capital 
in  a  simple  society  be  changed  by  the  discovery  of  a 
metallic  money.  This  discovery  would  soon  multiply 
all  kinds  of  wealth  and  capital.  The  state  would  be 
forced  to  seize  control  of  money  for  many  reasons, 
precisely  as  it  would  be  forced  to  seize  control  of  the 
road.  But  the  obviously  plain  reason  would  be  that 
involved  in  the  economic  welfare  of  the  individual 
using  money.  The  political  power  of  the  group 
would  naturally  and  mechanically  be  used  to  replace 


412  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

private  control  of  money  by  public  control.  And  if 
we  conceive  of  this  public  control  as  once  having 
been  established,  we  must  conceive  of  it  as  becoming 
organic.  But  we  cannot  conceive  that  money  would 
remain  under  private  control  if  we  conceive  of  money 
as  being  something  different  from  the  capital  used  in 
the  actual  creation  of  wealth. 

The  same  logic  may  be  applied,  for  example,  to 
instruments  of  communication  used  by  the  group  for 
the  facilitation  of  its  economic  life.  We  can  imagine 
a  private  postal  system  as  long  enduring  in  a  com- 
paratively simple  political  group.  But  we  cannot 
conceive  that  a  purely  private  postal  system  could  be 
maintained  in  a  very  wealthy  group,  the  rulers  of 
which  were  the  majority  of  the  people  who  would 
be  capable  of  using  the  system  generally  for  pri- 
vate communication.  A  military  government  would 
quickly  seize  such  a  system,  but  economic  necessity 
would  lead  to  the  seizure  as  surely  if  not  as  rapidly. 

If,  now,  we  use  the  terms  "railroad,"  "negotiable 
paper,"  and  "  telegraphs  "  instead  of  "  road,"  "metallic 
money,"  and  "  postal  system,"  we  have  not  departed 
from  our  principles  at  all.  We  have  simply  supposed 
that  the  economic  system  connoted  by  these  terms  is 
only  a  more  complex  system  than  that  connoted  by  the 
terms  first  used.  The  complexity  is  due,  of  course,  to 
the  complexity  and  increased  quantity  and  diffusion  of 
wealth.  But  the  principle,  which  is  found  to  apply  to 
the  strip  of  land  used  as  a  road,  applies  also  to  the  strip 
of  land  used  as  a  railroad.  There  is  no  essential  differ- 
ence whatever.  Nor  is  there  any  difference  between 
money  and  the  new  instruments  of  capital  other  than 
that  described  in  our  chapter  on  "  Social  Kinetics," 


IX  THE   LAW  OF  CAPITALIZATION  413 

and  this  difference  does  not  remove  the  new  in- 
struments from  the  action  of  the  law  of  capital- 
ization. 

In  a  simple  society  government  contact  with  capital 
is  necessarily  a  simple  one.  The  political  code  and 
practice  partake  more  of  the  individual  than  of  the 
social  character,  and  the  political  code  arises  out  of 
the  economic  code.  As  the  economic  system  becomes 
more  social,  the  political  system  changes  in  like 
manner.  Compound  economic  systems  produce  com- 
pound political  systems.  Both  grow  together,  and 
both  must  grow  together  because  they  are  the  prod- 
ucts of  the  forces  released  when  the  political  group 
begins  to  live  in  an  unchanging  locality.  If  govern- 
ment be  used  solely  for  the  regulation  of  the  economic 
life  of  the  group,  its  character  must  progress  in  com- 
plexity with  that  economic  life.  If  our  general  law 
of  the  relations  of  government  to  capital  be  true  of  a 
group  in  which  capital  has  been  differentiated  in  a 
very  low  degree,  it  must  be  true  also  of  a  group  in 
which  capital  has  been  differentiated  in  a  higher 
degree.  As  we  proceed  upwards  from  a  simple  and 
loosely  organized  group  to  a  more  highly  organized 
group,  we  find  developing  an  instrumental  mechanism 
which  integrates  political  power,  and  which  differen- 
tiates the  actual  functions  of  ruling  from  the  individual 
into  the  social  form.  This  growth  is  economico- 
political.  It  is  not  that  the  economic  growth  of  the 
group  runs  on  in  advance  of  the  political  growth,  and 
that  the  latter  overtakes  the  former  by  a  succession  of 
leaps.  By  no  means.  The  political  life  of  the  group 
is  constantly  readjusted  to  its  economic  life.  Political 
structure  and  function  arise  out  of  economic  structure 


414  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAF 

and  function  just  as  nervous  growth  arises  out  of  vital 
growth. 

With  this  fact  in  mind,  it  should  not  be  difficult  to 
perceive  that  the  extension  of  government  to  capital 
in  a  highly  differentiated  economic  group  keeps  equal 
pace  with  the  economic  changes  going  on  within  the 
group.  It  may  appear,  outwardly,  that  government 
is  still  far  away  from  the  function  of  actual  owner- 
ship and  production,  but  in  reality  the  two  are  already 
one,  and  need  only  one  movement  of  the  group  to 
clear  away  the  seeming,  or  the  formal,  separation. 
This  apparent  difference  vanishes  when  the  form  of 
the  government  is  changed  so  as  to  conform  with  its 
substance.  With  this  change  always  comes  wider 
liberty  for  the  life  of  the  group,  but  the  action  by 
which  the  change  has  been  effected  is  only  an  over- 
flow of  the  internal  economic  forces  of  the  group  upon 
the  form  of  its  political  life. 

The  action  here  described  is  observed  throughout 
the  entire  economico-political  history  of  the  world. 
We  not  only  find  that  economy  and  government  have 
thus  changed  together  in  the  history  of  every  pro- 
gressive group,  but  we  find  that  between  the  most 
savage  and  the  most  civilized  groups  lie  all  grades 
of  difference,  just  as  we  find  a  gradual  succession  of 
steps  in  the  forms  of  life  from  the  cell  up  to  man. 
We  can  easily  conceive  of  England  becoming  a  group 
almost  precisely  like  the  United  States ;  and  of  cor- 
responding changes  in  groups  which  rank  succes- 
sively lower  in  the  social  scale  down  to  the  merest 
savage  states,  such  as  that  of  the  American  Indians. 

We  may  be  pardoned  if  we  use  the  familiar  illus- 
tration of  the  butterfly  to  indicate  this  breaking  down, 


IX  THE  LAW  OF   CAPITALIZATION  415 

or  rupture,  of  political  by  economic  structural  growth. 
There  is  no  sudden  change  from  the  caterpillar  to 
the  full-winged  moth.  And  indeed  this  slow  change 
of  internal  form  is  a  law  of  all  life  growth  as  well 
as  of  social  growth.  The  shell,  from  which  the  chick 
breaks  forth  fully  developed,  has  much  the  same 
general  appearance  as  the  shell  of  a  new-laid  egg. 
But  the  eye  of  the  breeder  can  see  important  dif- 
ferences. There  is  no  need  of  any  external  or  artifi- 
cial force  to  break  the  shell  in  which  the  chick  is 
growing.  The  life  of  the  chick  is  vastly  more  free, 
and  its  growth  more  rapid,  after  the  shell  has  been 
ruptured,  as  is  also  the  life  of  the  moth  after  the 
rupture  of  the  chrysalis.  But  we  can  hardly  say 
that  the  growth  of  the  moth  is  hindered  by  the 
chrysalis-shell.  That  shell  is  a  condition  of  its 
growth.  And  so  we  may  say  that  political  forms  are 
conditions  of  economic  life,  which  vanish  when  the 
economic  life  of  the  group  has  outgrown  them. 

Thus  we  observe  that  there  is  no  real  difficulty  in 
perceiving  how  the  law  of  capitalization  acts  in  highly 
organized  groups  wherein  the  instrumental  mechan- 
ism of  government  seems  to  be  separated  by  an  hiatus 
from  the  function  of  actual  production.  The  life 
growth  of  the  economic  organism  proceeds  constantly 
beneath  the  chrysalis-shell  of  the  political  form  which 
the  group  assumed  on  emerging  from  its  simpler 
form  into  its  more  highly  organized  state.  In  the 
social,  as  in  the  vital  organism,  the  growth  is  toward 
constantly  freer  and  constantly  larger  amplitudes  of 
life  and  movement,  and  the  process  stops  when  the 
economic  and  political  life  of  the  group  are  in  perfect 
harmony  and  equilibrium,  and  not  until  then.  This 


416  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION          CHAP,  ix 

conclusion  is  inevitable  from  the  nature  of  the  law  of 
capitalization  itself.  The  same  principle  which  applies 
to  a  feudal  or  an  imperial  state  applies  to  a  demo- 
cratic state  in  which  capital  and  government  are 
more  highly  complex  and  wealth  more  generally 
diffused.  If  the  law  be  true  of  the  one,  it  must  be 
true  of  the  other. 

We  may  therefore  draw  a  corollary  from  the 
demonstration  of  the  general  theorem,  in  which  we 
can  assert  that  government  tinites  with  capital  over 
areas  of  equal  complexity. 


CHAPTER    X 

METHODS    OF    COMMUNICATION 

FEW  pastimes  are  more  alluring  than  that  of  giving 
the  imagination  free  scope  in  building  up  the  future 
of  human  society.  It  is  a  pastime  which  has  exer- 
cised the  brain  of  very  eminent  and  very  obscure 
philosophers,  from  Plato  down  to  present-day  writers 
of  so-called  "scientific  fiction." 

It  matters  little  how  lightly  some  of  these  extraordi- 
nary persons  are  weighted  down  with  genuine  knowl- 
edge of  the  real  facts  of  social  life.  The  truth  is, 
that  the  less  one  knows  of  social  science,  the  more 
confidence  he  has  in  his  anticipations  of  future  social 
existence.  Some  of  these  attempts  at  prevision  are 
merely  wild  guesses,  founded  upon  the  extravagantly 
ignorant  conceits  of  their  authors.  In  them  there  is 
no  evidence  of  sense  or  reason,  proportion  or  purpose. 
On  the  other  hand,  many  of  them  are  earnest  efforts 
to  forecast  the  future  by  a  more  or  less  careful  study 
of  its  germs  as  they  are  found  in  the  present  and  in 
the  past.  Such  works  as  these  are  genuine  contribu- 
tions to  the  literary  movement  we  noted  in  our  first 
chapter.  And  all  of  them,  of  whatever  kind,  are  to 
be  regarded  as  something  more  than  a  mere  desire  to 
write  a  book  which  will  sell.  We  must  regard  them 
as  a  manifestation  of  a  deep-seated  and  general  inter- 
est in  the  subject  of  social  motion. 
2E  417 


41 8  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

Of  this  kind  of  books  there  is  none  so  very  capably 
composed  as  the  two  works  of  Edward  Bellamy, 
"  Looking  Backwards,"  and  "  Equality."  If  Mr. 
Bellamy  won  fame  and  fortune  for  himself  by  writing 
the  two  books  named,  we  must  not  allow  that  fact  to 
obscure  to  us  the  very  praiseworthy  motive  which 
upheld  him  in  his  labors.  The  intolerant  criticism 
inspired  by  his  ideas  is  chiefly  advanced  by  persons 
who  are  quite  out  of  touch  with  the  merits  of  the 
question.  It  has  become  a  kind  of  fashion  to  speak 
disdainfully  of  socialists  as  "dreamers."  But  it  will 
be  observed  that  so  very^  competent  a  critic  as  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer  seldom  uses  that  word  when  he  is 
discussing  socialism.  He  refrains  from  its  use 
because  he  knows  quite  well  that  socialism,  whatever 
else  it  may  be,  is  not,  in  any  manner  of  speaking,  a 
"dream."  He  knows  that  it  is  a  fact  which  very 
seriously  discomposes  his  theory  of  individuation. 
And  the  most  precious  advice  to  be  given  to  light- 
headed critics  of  Bellamy  is  a  commendation  to  look 
up  Mr.  Spencer  before  disposing  of  socialism  with  a 
wave  of  the  hand. 

We  have  no  desire  to  speculate  with  Bellamy  on 
the  future  of  human  life.  But  we  can  truthfully  say 
that  if  our  law  of  capitalization  be  true,  the  future  of 
civilized  society  will  be  broadly  similar,  in  at  least  its 
basic  features,  to  the  state  he  describes  in  his  brill- 
iantly conceived  and  cleverly  written  books.  But 
Bellamy  assumes  too  much  when  he  supposes  that 
government  can  ever  assimilate  the  labor  of  those 
whose  highest  utility  in  the  social  scheme  lies  in  their 
very  individuality  itself.  Government  can  do  no 
more  than  absorb  such  capital  as  can  be  made  the 


X  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION  419 

object  of  regimentation.  Until  we  can  imagine  that 
men,  with  their  highly  complex  desires,  can  fall  into  a 
dismal  phalanstery  like  a  bee-hive,  we  cannot  imagine 
that  government  can  do  more  than  own  and  operate 
capital  of  a  kind  which  the  "  trusts  "  own  and  operate 
now.  It  is  clear  that  there  can  be  no  combination  of 
capital  for  purely  productive  purposes,  when  the 
capital  in  question  is  that  used  by  an  individual 
whose  contact  with  it  is  the  conditio  sine  qua  non  of 
the  value  of  the  product. 

But  if  we  restrict  the  equality  of  remuneration  for 
labor  to  the  wealth  created  by  government  industry, 
we  shall  have  a  conception  of  economic  equality  in 
perfect  accord  with  our  law  of  capitalization.  This 
would  be  a  true  social  equilibrium  so  far  as  wealth  is 
concerned ;  and  it  could  never  be  disturbed  as  long 
as  men  would  be  moved  by  the  same  desires  that 
move  them  now.  It  was  this  economic  equilibrium 
that  Bellamy  was  looking  for  when  he  put  his  fancy 
to  work  upon  the  material  he  found  before  him  in  the 
social  state  of  the  American  people.  It  will  be  ob- 
served, too,  that  Bellamy  accounts  for  the  transition 
by  postulating  moral  forces  as  its  cause.  Still,  Bel- 
lamy has  fallen  into  the  error  of  Marx  in  supposing 
that  capitalists  can  create  a  moral  revulsion  by  rob- 
bing the  people  of  their  wealth.  That  error  is  dis- 
posed of  by  our  law  of  the  increasing  capacity. 

This  touch  of  criticism  is  made  here  to  call  atten- 
tion to  that  fact  that  while  we  have  provided  for  an 
economic  equilibrium,  we  have  yet  to  consider  the 
equilibrium  of  population  hinted  at  in  another  place. 
Before  approaching  that  highly  important  subject,  we 
must  ask  the  reader  to  turn  his  attention  to  an  order 


420  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

of  facts  which  have  a  distinct  bearing,  not  only  upon 
the  future  of  population,  but  also  upon  the  very  eco- 
nomic equilibrium  out  of  which,  we  hope  to  show,  the 
equilibrium  of  population  is  arising.  The  highly  in- 
tricate character  of  our  subject  demands  these  excur- 
sions into  seemingly  remote  fields  ;  but,  as  we  overtake 
the  objects  of  our  search,  we  see  that  to  have  neglected 
them  would  have  necessitated  the  double  labor  of 
retracing  our  steps.  It  may  appear  that  methods  of 
communication  have  only  a  remote  relation  to  the 
facts  we  have  been  just  discussing ;  but,  as  we  pro- 
ceed, we  shall  find  that  this  subject  is  of  prime  impor- 
tance in  bringing  together  the  elements  of  social 
motion  out  of  which  the  twofold  equilibrium  of 
human  society  is  building  itself  up. 

In  speaking  of  a  group  of  men,  living  under  an 
organized  government,  we  frequently  describe  it  as 
the  "body  politic."  By  the  term  "body  politic"  we 
convey  the  idea  of  a  compact  mass  of  human  beings 
each  of  whom  is  only  an  insignificant  part  of  the 
whole.  The  group  itself  is  considered  as  a  definite, 
corporate  organism,  the  active  units  of  which  are  indi- 
vidual men.  Such  a  group  is  likewise  frequently 
denoted  as  the  "  body  social "  ;  and  although  there 
may  be  a  very  fine  shade  of  difference  between  the 
meanings  of  the  two  terms,  they  both  serve  a  very 
similar  purpose  and  describe,  in  a  general  way,  the 
selfsame  thing. 

When  we  use  the  term  "  body  "  as  applied  to  living 
men,  we  imply  the  existence  of  a  mind.  This  is  true, 
at  least,  of  general  speech.  If,  therefore,  an  organ- 
ized group  of  men  may  be  said  to  have  a  social  body, 
we  can  as  truly  assert  that  the  same  group  has  a 


X  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION  421 

social  mind ;  and  this  term  is  used  to  denote  the 
thought-life  of  the  group,  as  the  correlative  term  is 
used  to  denote  its  bodily  life. 

The  nature  of  the  social  mind  is  a  question  giving 
rise  to  no  inconsiderable  dispute  among  those  who 
are  concerned  with  social  science.  Many  very  cau- 
tious writers  are  afraid  that  the  use  of  the  term,  if 
too  freely  indulged  in,  will  lead  to  confusion  and  mis- 
conception, just  as  these  same  writers  are  concerned 
lest  similar  conceptions  shall  prevail  when  we  con- 
sider a  human  group  as  an  organism.  The  fear,  how- 
ever, seems  to  be  groundless  in  both  instances.  In 
Chapters  III  and  IV  we  discussed  the  latter  phase 
of  the  subject,  and  we  need  not  enlarge  upon  the 
definitions  we  then  made.  If  by  the  term  social  mind 
we  denote  the  united  thought-life  of  the  group,  there 
will  be  no  danger  of  a  misunderstanding.  Indeed, 
the  average  reader  will  be  quite  unconscious  of  the 
danger  we  are  hinting  at.  But  he  will  see  the  matter 
in  another  light  when  we  explain  that  some  theorists 
believe  that  the  social  mind  is  not  merely  the  sum  of 
individual  minds,  but  is  itself  an  actual  organic  unity, 
a  distinct  and  substantial  entity,  a  self-conscious, 
integrated,  harmonious  structure,  quite  as  closely 
organized  and  quite  as  intensely  sensitive  as  the 
mind  of  the  individual  man. 

This  conception  of  the  social  mind  is  regarded  by 
some  critics  as  being  altogether  too  mystic  to  admit  of 
scientific  proof.  We  shall  neither  accept  it  nor  reject 
it  here,  but  shall  proceed  to  our  analysis  of  the  social 
mind  which  will,  perhaps,  disclose  the  fact  that  this 
conception  is  no  more  mystic  than  is  the  popular  and 
common  idea  of  the  social  mind ;  that  is,  the  idea  of 


422  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

a  composite  sum  of  individual  minds  functioning 
together.  The  question  seems  to  resolve  itself  down 
to  this  plain  statement  :  Is  the  social  mind  a  perfect 
unity,  precisely  similar  in  its  general  operations  to 
the  mind  of  an  individual  man  ;  or  is  it  merely  a  num- 
ber of  individual  minds,  each  operating  in  an  indepen- 
dent manner,  and  only  associated  with  other  minds 
through  the  media  of  sight,  hearing,  and  touch  ? 

In  making  this  analysis  we  shall  touch  upon  a  ques- 
tion which  has  stirred  the  thoughts  of  men  since  the 
human  race  began  to  manufacture  written  records  of 
its  own  doings.  That  question  is  the  existence  of  an 
immaterial  or  spiritual  soul, — a  substantial,  conscious 
entity,  resident  in  the  human  body  but,  in  a  way, 
independent  of  it,  —  the  intellectual,  rational,  meta- 
physical ego  of  man. 

Does  there  really  exist  an  extra-physical,  immate- 
rial soul  such  as  we  have  described  ?  The  question  is 
an  important  one  and  no  doubt  highly  interesting. 
If  it  could  be  proved  that  there  is  attached  to  the 
body  of  man,  or  of  any  other  animal,  an  immaterial 
something,  — a  something  which,  while  in  no  degree 
partaking  of  the  nature  of  matter,  is  yet  capable  of 
consciousness, — a  very  considerable  addition  would  be 
made,  it  need  not  be  said,  to  the  sum  of  demonstra- 
ble truth.  But  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  the 
existence  of  a  non-physical  soul  is  a  matter  of  belief 
purely.  Positive  proof  of  the  existence  of  such  a 
thing  could  be  encompassed  in  but  one  way  only. 
That  would  lie  in  the  way  of  showing  to  the  senses 
some  evidence  of  this  immaterial  intelligence.  Now 
this  is  precisely  what  can  never  be  done.  We  can 
never  bring  the  senses  to  attest  the  existence  of 


X  METHODS   OF  COMMUNICATION  423 

something  which  the  senses  themselves  cannot  per- 
ceive. 

Nobody  can  prove  that  an  immaterial  soul  does  not 
exist.  Yet  it  is  just  as  certain  that  nobody,  who 
uses  the  methods  of  modern  psychology,  can  demon- 
strate that  it  does.  Some  very  eminent  psycholo- 
gists believe  that  a  spiritual  soul  abides  in  the  bodies 
of  men.  Others  adhere  to  the  opposite  belief.  But 
the  beliefs  of  psychologists  have  nothing  to  do  with 
demonstration.  It  is  a  matter  of  supreme  indiffer- 
ence what  they  believe.  Yet  it  is  a  significant  fact 
that  some  psychologists  proceed  with  their  work  quite 
apart  from  any  question  of  this  kind.  The  province 
of  psychology  lies  in  the  structure  and  function  of 
the  nerves  and  the  brain.  We  can  demonstrate  the 
action  of  ganglion  cells,  and,  in  this  way,  account  for 
most  of  the  facts  of  human  consciousness,  and  of  the 
consciousness  of  animals  other  than  man. 

As  it  is  our  purpose  here  to  understand  social  con- 
sciousness, we  must  first  glance  at  the  individual 
mind,  and  as  this  is  a  psychological  matter,  we  shall 
treat  it  in  a  psychological  manner.  This  treatment 
will  of  course  exclude  all  conceptions  of  a  purely 
metaphysical  kind.  Such  conceptions  are  excluded 
from  science  in  general.  The  economist,  for  exam- 
ple, takes  no  account  of  them  whatever.  The  cotton 
crop  of  Texas  may  be  said  to  depend  upon  rain. 
Many  persons,  of  a  metaphysical  turn  of  mind, 
believe  that  the  quantity  of  precipitation  can  be  regu- 
lated by  prayer.  But  the  economist,  in  seeking  to 
account  for  the  movements  of  the  cotton  market, 
does  not  assume  that  the  weather  may  be  controlled 
by  the  prayers  of  the  cotton  raisers.  He  proceeds 


424  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

without  any  regard  to  that  hypothesis.  The  psychol- 
ogist, in  accounting  for  mental  phenomena,  does  not 
consider  theories  which  assume  the  existence  of  an 
immaterial  soul.  If  such  a  soul  exists,  its  existence 
is  a  very  important  fact.  But  psychology  has  not 
been  used  to  prove  that  an  immaterial  soul  has  any 
reality. 

The  subject-matter  of  psychology  is  the  brain  and 
the  nerves,  with  their  functions.  The  brain  of  a 
highly  developed  animal — let  us  say  a  man  —  acts 
through  the  use  of  a  countless  number  of  cells  which 
make  up  the  cortex  of  the  brain.  It  is  not  necessary 
here  to  enter  into  the  minute  anatomical  or  physio- 
logical details  of  cerebration.  These  details  are  to  be 
found  in  the  text-books  of  psychology,  and  are  famil- 
iar to  most  readers  who  have  studied  that  science, 
either  in  its  literature  or  its  laboratories.  Suffice  it  to 
say  that  all  mental  stimuli  come  from  without,  directly 
or  indirectly.  Impressions  are  conveyed  to  the  brain 
by  tracts  of  nervous  tissue  called  "  afferent  "  nerves. 
Operations  within  the  brain  itself  take  place  by 
means  of  certain  movements  among  the  ganglion 
cells,  and  this  process  is  called  intellection.  Thus 
far  psychology  is  certain  enough  of  its  ground.  That 
which  is  most  sought  for  by  psychologists  is  a 
thorough  comprehension  of  this  ganglionic  action. 
Psycho-physicists  work  on  the  assumption  that  all 
the  obscure  phenomena  of  mind  could  be  explained  if 
the  cellular  action  of  the  brain  were  once  completely 
understood.  Many  of  the  simpler  operations  of 
thought  are  easily  accounted  for  in  this  way ;  and 
many  of  the  more  complex  phenomena  of  the  mind 
are  found,  upon  closer  examination,  to  be  due  alto- 


x  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION  425 

gather  to  the  same  cause.  Consciousness  itself  is 
held  to  be  only  the  sum  of  ganglionic  action,  and 
while  this  view  is  not  the  popular  one,  nobody  has 
been  able  to  adduce  a  single  fact  in  its  contradiction. 
In  ordinary  usage  the  phrase  "rapidity of  thought" 
is  only  a  figure  of  speech.  In  reality  thought  is  a 
comparatively  slow  process.  The  speed  with  which 
sensation  travels  along  the  nerves  is  not  nearly  so 
rapid  as  many  other  motions  in  nature.  Recent 
experiments  have  fixed  the  speed  of  sensation  at 
about  146  feet  per  second,  whereas  light  travels 
at  the  inconceivable  rate  of  about  186,000  miles  per 
second,  and  energy  of  other  kinds,  such  as  gravita- 
tion, electricity,  and  other  forms  of  force,  act  at 
immense  distances  almost  instantaneously.  A  pin- 
prick on  the  finger  will  be  felt  in  the  brain  much 
more  quickly  than  a  similar  stimulus  applied  to  the 
toe.  If  we  conceive  of  a  man  having  an  arm  100 
miles  long,  we  can  readily  realize  how  very  slow  is 
nervous  action  when  compared  with  electrical  activity, 
for  example.  We  thus  see  how  very  slow  is  nervous 
action  in  at  least  one  of  its  aspects,  and  experiment 
has  proved  that  the  process  of  thought  is  subject  to 
similar  laws.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  experiment  has 
proved  that  thought  is  nothing  but  nervous  action 
highly  compounded,  and,  indeed,  no  experiment  is 
needed  to  show  that  the  same  brain  will  act  faster 
at  one  time  than  at  another,  and  that  different  brains 
have  different  degrees  of  rapidity  in  their  functioning. 
This  is  proved  by  the  effects  of  training  and  practice. 
A  brain  accustomed  to  mathematics  will  rapidly  pass 
through  profound  and  intricate  thought  quite  difficult 
and  tardy  for  a  brain  unaccustomed  to  action  of  this 


426  THE  LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

kind.  But  if  we  consider  the  brain  of  any  particular 
individual  alone,  it  is  evident  that  the  rapidity  of 
thought  will  depend  altogether  upon  the  speed  with 
which  the  action  of  the  various  groups  of  cells  is 
coordinated.  So,  if  we  fancy  a  brain  with  convolu- 
tions many  miles  in  measurement,  we  can  fancy 
that  thought  of  every  kind  will  be  very  slow  indeed. 
Let  us  say  that  a  gigantic  brain  like  this  should  be 
engaged  in  some  commonplace  operation  of  mind ; 
that  its  possessor  were  told  to  design  a  steamship. 

In  the  first  place,  if  the  individual's  body  be 
imagined  to  be  constructed  on  the  same  scale  as  his 
brain,  an  easily  measurable  time  would  elapse  before 
the  auditory  apparatus  could  convey  the  sensation 
of  sound  to  the  organ  of  thought.  Numerous  ideas 
would  simultaneously  arise,  producing  thoughts  con- 
cerned with  steel,  mechanics,  mathematics,  specific 
gravity,  and  other  ideas  constituting  the  mental  image 
of  a  ship.  These  ideas  could  not  be  coordinated  until 
nervous  motion  had  passed  along  the  various  tracts 
of  nervous  matter  connecting  the  various  groups  of 
cells  involved ;  and  we  can  imagine  that  many  minutes, 
nay  even  hours,  might  elapse  while  the  giant  brain 
was  forming  the  mental  image  of  a  ship — a  process 
which  seems  to  be  instantaneous  in  a  brain  like  our 
own.  The  small  size  of  the  human  brain  permits 
the  very  rapid  formation  of  the  idea  of  a  ship  after 
the  stimulus  has  been  applied  to  the  membrane  of  the 
ear-drum ;  but  this  rapidity  of  conception  is  due  to 
the  small  size  of  the  human  head  and  the  proximity 
to  one  another  of  all  of  its  organs  of  sensation  and 
thought.  If  we  fancy  a  microscopic  man,  in  all 
respects  the  facsimile  of  ourselves,  we  must  fancy 


X  METHODS   OF  COMMUNICATION  427 

that  his  thought  and  his  sensation  would  act  propor- 
tionally faster  than  those  of  a  man  of  our  own  stature. 

From  these  considerations  it  should  be  plain  that 
mental  action,  like  physical  or  vital  action,  is  purely 
mechanical.  When  we  bear  this  in  mind,  much  of 
the  mystery  associated  with  the  process  of  thought  is 
seen  to  vanish.  We  do  not  know  the  nature  of  ner- 
vous force ;  but  it  is  none  the  less  true  that  we  do 
know  the  method  by  which  nervous  force  acts ;  and 
in  that  method  there  is  no  mystery  at  all.  We  do  not 
know  many  of  the  details  of  the  method  because  psy- 
chologists have  not  yet  demonstrated  all  the  facts  of 
consciousness,  or  understood  all  the  various  coordina- 
tions of  the  various  groups  of  cells  in  the  gray  layer 
of  the  brain.  But  it  is  rational  to  assume  that  much 
will  be  learned  in  this  respect,  as  much  has  already 
been  learned  in  this  and  in  other  respects  of  nervous 
action.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  rational 
ground  for  the  assumption  that  the  brain-cells  of  a 
man  are  moved  by  any  force  other  than  that  found 
in  nervous  matter  itself  ;  or  that  human  thought  is 
essentially  different  from  thought  in  the  brain  of 
other  highly  organized  animals. 

The  operation  of  the  individual  mind,  therefore,  so 
far  as  any  effort  of  science  can  demonstrate,  is  carried 
on  by  the  activities  of  cells.  Cells  are  the  proper 
units  of  mental  action,  and  the  social  mind  must  be 
found  to  be  similar  in  principle  ;  that  is,  its  operations 
must  be  carried  on  by  the  activities  of  units,  or 
instruments  of  action.  These  units,  it  should  be 
clear,  can  be  none  other  than  the  minds  of  individuals 
functioning  together.  When  we  regard  social  con- 
sciousness from  this  point  of  view,  there  will  be  no 


9 
428  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

mystery  in  it  more  than  there  is  in  the  human  mind 
itself.  Sociologists,  who  reject  the  so-called  mysti- 
cal view  of  the  social  mind,  are  quite  ready  to  accept 
the  mystical  view  of  the  individual  mind.  All  that 
these  gentlemen  accomplish,  however,  is  to  evade,  by 
indirection,  the  plain,  blunt  question  of  an  immate- 
rial soul.  They  do  not  hesitate  to  reject  the  idea  of 
a  social  soul  of  that  kind  because  popular  opinion  is 
at  one  with  themselves  in  this  matter.  But  popular 
opinion  very  positively  accepts  the  notion  of  an  imma- 
terial mind  in  the  individual,  and  hence  these  evasive 
sociologists  bow  to  the  common  belief  and  conciliate 
it  by  tacitly  assuming  that  the  individual  conscious- 
ness is  different  in  principle  from  the  social  conscious- 
ness. By  doing  this  they  serve  a  double  purpose ; 
they  save  their  faces  from  popular  attack,  and  at  the 
same  time  they  conserve  their  reputations  as  "  medi- 
cine men  "  of  profound  and  extraordinary  wisdom. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  only  misconception  as  to 
the  nature  of  the  social  mind  lies  with  the  evasive 
sociologists  themselves,  who  are  afraid  to  treat  the 
question  as  true  psychology  treats  the  question  of 
individual  intellection.  The  common  man  has  no 
false  ideas  at  all  in  his  conception  of  the  social  mind. 
He  looks  upon  it  as  the  united  mental  action  of  the 
men  making  up  an  organized  group.  And  men  gen- 
erally accept  the  fact  of  social  consciousness  as  self- 
evident.  There  is  no  mystery  for  the  uncultured 
man  in  the  ordinary  operations  of  the  social  mind. 
It  is  only  when  he  considers  his  own  mind  that  he 
finds  himself  perplexed. 

The  uncultured  person  sees  mystery  in  the  phe- 
nomena of  his  own  consciousness  simply  because  he 


X  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION  429 

does  not  understand  the  action  going  on  in  his 
brain.  He  knows  nothing  of  cellular  physiology,  or 
of  ganglionic  structure,  more  than  a  savage  knows 
of  the  structure  and  function  of  a  compound  steam 
engine ;  and  the  work  of  the  brain  is  as  mysterious 
to  him  as  that  of  the  steam  engine  is  to  the  savage. 
But  even  the  plainest  of  uncultured  men  can  under- 
stand how  several  or  many  other  men  can  be  informed 
one  by  one,  or  all  together,  of  a  fact  they  did  not 
know  before.  To  suggest  that  there  was  anything 
mystic  or  supernatural  in  that  process  would  be  an 
insult  to  the  meanest  of  intellects.  Being  himself 
one  of  the  units  of  the  social  mind,  he  can  under- 
stand the  motive  of  its  simpler  operations,  because  he 
can  understand  how  the  units  act  together. 

Yet  when  we  consider  the  more  profound  and  com- 
plex operations  of  the  social  mind,  these  become  very 
obscure  to  all  but  a  few  intellects.  And  if.  these  few 
understand  them,  it  is  only  because  they  understand 
how  the  simpler  operations  are  compounded  together 
and  issue  in  operations  of  a  more  complex  character. 
If  the  trained  psychologist  understands  the  simple 
and  compound  motions  of  his  own  consciousness,  it  is 
only  because  he  knows,  in  large  measure  at  least, 
how  the  units  of  his  consciousness  act;  and  when  the 
action  of  each  of  its  own  units  is  understood  by  the 
social  mind,  there  will  be  no  mystery  there. 

It  will  be  perfectly  rational  to  assume  that  motion 
is  communicated  from  one  ganglion  cell  to  another 
by  contact.  It  is  by  contact  of  one  kind  or  another 
that  motion  is  distributed  among  molecules.  We 
may  not  as  yet  be  competent  to  describe  the  kind  of 
contact  or  the  intimate  method  by  which  ganglion 


43O  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

cells  act.  Microscopes  may  never  be  able  to  show 
the  medium  through  which  cells  are  attracted  one  to 
another.  No  more  may  telescopes  be  adequate  to 
show  the  substance  through  which  light,  or  gravitation, 
or  actinic  force  acts.  But  we  must  assume  that  there 
is  a  medium,  and  a  material  medium,  by  which  contact 
is  encompassed  by  cells,  as  we  assume  a  medium  for 
the  action  of  light,  or  of  any  other  force  in  nature. 

Let  us  fancy  a  giant  eye  to  be  looking  through  a 
giant  microscope  at  the  motions  of  a  body  of  men. 
Let  us  suppose  that  the  object  examined  be  an  army 
passing  through  the  manoeuvres  of  a  general  drill 
upon  an  open  plain.  The  giant  eye  would  see  the 
most  complex  and  yet  seemingly  regular  motions, 
involving  certain  groups  of  the  men  at  times,  and 
certain  other  groups  at  times.  Again,  the  entire 
army  would  pass  through  evolutions  now  rapid  and 
now  slow.  The  giant  eye  would  see  one  man  very 
distinctly  influencing  the  action  of  other  men,  and 
numbers  of  men  influencing  the  action  of  others  with 
comparatively  enormous  distances  between  them. 
Yet  this  giant  eye  could  not  perceive  the  interlock- 
ing medium  of  air  and  the  minute  instruments  of 
speech  and  sign  used  by  the  microscopic  men  in 
their  intercommunication.  The  general  action  would 
seem  not  unlike  that  of  the  nerve-cells  of  a  fish  as  we 
see  them  under  a  microscope.  But  would  the  giant 
observer  be  justified  did  he  assume  that  his  men  com- 
municated with  one  another  by  some  supernatural 
method  ?  If  he  were  a  rational  being,  and  not  a 
mystic,  he  would  of  a  certainty  assume  that  the 
rapidly  moving  objects  he  was  examining  communi- 
cated with  one  another  by  means  of  some  material 


X  METHODS   OF  COMMUNICATION  431 

medium  which  his  giant  eye  could  not  discover.  If 
the  mind  of  the  army  be  a  social  mind,  —  and  it  is 
such,  in  truth,  —  it  would  seem  to  act  by  essentially 
the  same  method  as  that  observed  in  the  cellular 
movements  of  the  human  brain,  and  there  is  no  more 
mystery  in  the  one  than  in  the  other. 

It  is  unanimity  of  action  among  individual  men 
that  constitutes  the  social  mind.  There  could  be  no 
social  mind  in  a  group  of  men  each  of  whom  was 
impelled  by  motives  different  from  those  of  the 
others.  There  could  be  no  "public  opinion"  upon 
any  question  upon  which  no  two  individuals  could 
agree.  Nor  could  there  arise  an  individual  conscious- 
ness from  the  incoordinated  action  of  brain-cells,  even 
if  we  were  to  permit  ourselves  to  fancy  a  brain  in 
which  coordination  of  some  kind  did  not  exist.  If 
we  conceive  the  social  mind  to  be  no  more  than  the 
sum  of  the  action  of  individuals  acting  coordinately 
together,  we  shall  have  a  conception  precisely  similar 
to  that  of  the  psychologist  when  he  deals  with  the 
consciousness  of  a  human  being  or  of  any  other 
animal.  The  one  conception  is  quite  as  free  from 
mysticism  or  superstition  as  is  the  other,  and  if  we 
accept  them  both,  we  are  only  eliminating  the  mystic 
and  supernatural  from  the  operations  of  the  individual 
as  well  as  of  the  social  consciousness  of  man. 

Having  thus  laid  down  the  rational  basis  upon 
which  we  are  to  deal  with  collective,  or  social,  mental 
phenomena,  we  can  now  proceed  with  the  treatment 
itself. 

Social  consciousness  will  be  vivid,  clear,  faint,  or 
obscure  according  to  the  efficiency  of  the  means  and 
methods  by  which  individuals  communicate  with  one 


432  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

another,  and  by  which  one  or  many  communicate 
with  some  or  with  all.  In  primitive  societies  the 
only  means  by  which  information  is  passed  about  is 
the  simplest  form  of  language.  Language  is  of  two 
kinds,  that  of  speech  and  that  of  signs.  The  lan- 
guage of  signs  is  much  older  than  that  of  speech. 
But  with  men,  vocal  language  and  sign  language  are 
always  found  together,  and  develop  together  in  a 
growing  society. 

This  growth  and  development  of  language  springs 
directly  out  of  the  cumulating  environment  multiply- 
ing in  a  fixed  place.  For  it  will  easily  be  seen  how 
new  varieties  of  things  will  require  new  names,  and 
how  new  words  will  be  required  to  express  the  com- 
plex relations  of  the  new  things  to  one  another,  and 
the  consequent  complex  relations  of  ideas.  Anthro- 
pology informs  us  how  rude  picture  writing  has 
evolved  into  our  present  written  language,  while 
philology  explains  the  growth  of  true  language  — 
that  is,  language  vocally  used.  A  community,  there- 
fore, which  has  developed  the  most  complex  environ- 
ment will  have  the  most  complex  means  and  methods 
of  communication,  vocal  and  instrumental.  Intricate 
as  was  the  language  of  the  Greeks,  with  all  its  philo- 
sophical and  metaphysical  words,  it  is  simplicity 
itself  when  compared  with  modern  English,  in  which 
are  found  words  denoting  a  thousand  varieties  of 
things  and  of  thoughts  which  had  no  existence  for 
the  Greeks. 

On  the  character  of  the  environment  will  depend, 
too,  the  ease  with  which  intelligence  is  passed  about 
among  men.  Let  us  compare,  for  example,  the 
instruments  of  communication  possessed  by  an  an- 


X  METHODS   OF  COMMUNICATION  433 

cient  and  a  modern  community.  It  is  desired,  let  us 
say,  to  acquaint  the  people  of  New  York  with  a  fact 
of  general  importance.  Not  more  than  an  hour  will 
be  required  to  make  the  community  familiar  with  the 
desired  knowledge.  The  telephone,  the  telegraph, 
the  newspaper,  and  the  railroad  are  the  instruments 
by  which  the  knowledge  will  be  rapidly  passed  about. 
If  it  were  so  desired,  intelligence  could  be  dissemi- 
nated in  so  thorough  a  manner  that  almost  every  in- 
habitant of  New  York,  as  well  as  the  people  of  every 
other  large  American  city,  would  be  made  acquainted 
with  the  news  in  a  single  hour  or  less.  Within  an 
hour  after  the  assassination  of  President  McKinley, 
the  tragedy  was  generally  known  in  all  the  large 
American  cities ;  and  within  a  few  hours  almost  every 
American  citizen,  in  town  and  country  alike,  was  in- 
formed of  the  fact.  But  in  ancient  Rome  this  quick 
intelligencing  would  have  been  impossible,  and  this, 
too,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  territory  to  be  cov- 
ered was  comparatively  insignificant,  and  the  number 
of  persons  to  be  informed  comparatively  small.  If  we 
extend  the  illustration  to  the  confines  of  the  British 
and  the  Roman  empires,  its  effect  will  be  heightened, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  United  States.  Twenty-four 
hours  after  the  assassination  of  President  McKinley 
the  entire  civilized  world  had  been  informed  of  the 
occurrence.  If  the  same  was  not  true  of  the  death  of 
Julius  Caesar,  it  was  only  because  ancient  peoples 
lacked  the  efficient  instruments  of  communication 
possessed  by  the  world  to-day.  The  clarity  and  the 
quantity  of  social  consciousness  are  hence  seen  to  be 
determined  by  the  variety  and  quantity  of  the  things 
constituting  the  wealth  of  the  social  body.  Thus  it 

2F 


434  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

is  a  fact  that  millions  of  people  in  China  are  yet  una- 
ware that  China  has  passed  through  two  important 
wars  in  the  past  few  years.  There  are  no  railroads, 
telegraphs,  telephones,  or  newspapers  in  general  use 
among  the  Chinese. 

These  are  very  simple  truths,  and  there  would  be 
no  need  to  point  them  out  were  it  not  for  the  highly 
important  conclusions  flowing  from  them.  Methods 
of  communication  assume  a  new  interest  when  we 
remember  that  they  are  distinct  helps  to  the  equable 
diffusion  of  wealth.  Efficient  instruments  of  commu- 
nication broaden  and  deepen  the  flow  of  social  forces 
toward  economic  equality,  and  are  themselves  assisted 
and  improved  by  the  progressive  diffusion  of  wealth. 
The  one  process  reacts  upon  the  other.  Efficient 
instruments  of  production  and  exchange  are  found  to 
be  excellent  tools  for  the  passing  about  of  intelli- 
gence. The  locomotive  steam  engine,  used  primarily 
for  transportation,  was  discovered  to  be  a  most  useful 
instrument  of  communication.  But  the  locomotive 
proved  to  be  much  more  than  either  or  both  of  these 
things.  This  invention  was  the  direct  cause  of  an 
enormous  increase  in  capital,  and  in  other  kinds  of 
wealth  having  only  an  indirect  relation  to  transporta- 
tion and  communication. 

Again,  the  simple  invention  of  movable  printing 
type  —  the  most  important  instrument  of  communica- 
tion we  have  —  has  caused  the  creation  of  priceless 
quantities  of  capital  and  wealth  not  directly  connected 
with  the  art  of  printing.  This  discovery,  when  united 
with  that  of  applied  steam,  has  borne  fruit  in  the 
creation  of  coordinate  industries  of  incalculable  value 
to  men.  The  electric  telegraph  and  telephone, 


X  METHODS   OF  COMMUNICATION  435 

second  in  importance  to  printing,  have  vastly  in- 
creased the  productive  power  of  society,  adding  at 
once  to  the  quantity  and  variety  of  wealth,  and  indi- 
rectly stimulating  invention  in  other  branches  of  elec- 
tric art  and  science. 

But  what  is  the  nature  of  these  inventions  ?  Are 
they  not  all  of  them  purely  capitalistic  ?  And  what 
is  their  effect  upon  social  growth  ?  Is  it  not  precisely 
that  which  we  have  described  in  our  discussion  of 
social  kinetics  ?  All  of  them  primarily  contribute  to 
the  constant  increase  of  wealth,  not  only  in  the  indus- 
try arising  directly  from  the  inventions  themselves, 
but  in  all  other  industries  as  well.  The  telegraph, 
the  steamship,  the  railroad,  the  printing-press,  inti- 
mately connect  the  producer  of  wheat  on  the  margin 
of  cultivation  with  the  consumer  of  wheat  at  the 
centre  of  utilization ;  and  this  power  of  quick  intelli- 
gencing  reacts  again  over  other  and  more  remote 
areas  of  industry  to  the  farthest  borders  of  civilization 
and  even  beyond  them. 

Methods  of  communication  have  therefore  a  two- 
fold effect  upon  the  body  social.  While  they  serve 
to  increase  the  quantity  of  wealth,  they  also  serve  to 
assist  in  its  progressive  diffusion.  And  if  this  be 
true,  it  must  follow  that  these  same  methods  help  the 
process  of  capitalization  we  have  described  in  the 
preceding  chapter.  It  is  to  its  superior  instruments 
of  communication  that  the  United  States  owes  its 
rapid  coalition  of  capital  into  "  trusts  "  and  combina- 
tions. The  instruments,  of  course,  existed  long  be- 
fore they  were  used  for  this  purpose.  The  telegraph 
and  the  railroad  naturally  preceded  the  "  trust " ;  and 
it  might  have  been  that  nobody  had  thought  of  using 


436  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

them  in  this  way.  So,  too,  Guttenberg  might  never 
have  thought  of  the  movable  printing  type.  But  it  is 
clear  that  the  "  trust "  method  of  capitalization  could 
never  have  been  practised  without  the  telegraph,  the 
postal  service,  and  the  railroad.  The  idea  might 
have  suggested  itself  to  many  minds,  and  probably 
did.  We  find  the  beginning  of  industrial  combination 
in  ancient  history ;  but  modern  American  methods  of 
capital  could  never  have  become  concrete  fact  were 
it  not  for  modern  American  methods  of  communi- 
cation. 

The  great  social  effect  of  the  tools  of  intelligencing 
will  be  found  in  all  other  processes  of  social  life  at 
which  we  have  glanced  in  the  preceding  pages. 
Methods  of  communication  profoundly  affect  all  social 
motion.  That  effect  is  seen  in  labor  as  well  as  in 
capital.  Labor-unionism  flourishes  most  in  trades 
which  bring  the  workers  into  close  proximity  to  one 
another.  And  if  unionism  is  now  generally  practised, 
it  is  only  because  laborers  use  the  instruments  freely. 
Through  the  press  and  the  telegraph,  and  through 
quick  personal  travel,  it  is  easy  quickly  to  secure 
united  action  in  an  entire  trade  composed  of  large 
and  widely  separated  bodies  of  workers.  The  same 
unanimity  of  action  is  denied  to  trades  in  which  the 
individual  workers  are  widely  separated  from  one 
another,  as  in  the  farming  industry.  Farm  laborers 
cannot  socialize  their  work,  just  as  farmers  themselves 
cannot  socialize  their  capital ;  and  this  is  true  because 
farmers  and  their  laborers,  owing  to  the  highly  dis- 
crete character  of  their  habitations,  cannot  use  the 
new  instruments  of  communication  with  the  same 
effect  as  can  manufacturers  and  tradesmen.  Yet  the 


x  METHODS   OF   COMMUNICATION  437 

farmer  has  not  been  insensible  to  the  benefits  of  the 
compound  method  of  capitalization. 

Agricultural  capitalists,  in  America  at  least,  are 
wide  awake  to  the  advantages  of  industrial  combina- 
tion. They  have  tried  various  ways  of  doing  what 
other  capitalists  have  done  in  this  respect.  They 
have  failed  because  of  the  scattered  character  of  their 
habitations  —  a  condition  thus  far  due  to  the  exten- 
sive character  of  land.  Manufacturers  and  circu- 
lators of  commodities  can  compound  their  capital  by 
the  use  of  the  stock  share,  the  railroad,  the  telegraph, 
and  the  postal  service.  These  methods  excellently 
serve  the  purpose  of  labor  and  capital  in  other  in- 
dustries. Finding  themselves  prevented  from  using 
the  new  method  in  a  private  way,  agriculturists 
have  persistently  demanded  that  the  government 
shall  use  its  power  to  enable  them  to  do  so.  They 
do  not  demand  that  the  government  shall  take  over 
their  land  and  operate  it ;  but  they  ask  that  govern- 
ment shall  control  the  product  of  the  land  by  purchas- 
ing it  outright  when  it  is  offered.  That  is  to  say, 
they  deem  it  advantageous  to  themselves  that  the 
government  shall  act  as  a  capitalist  in  all  that  part 
of  agriculture  not  pertaining  to  production. 

The  motive  of  the  farmer  should  be  very  manifest. 
He  desires  to  retain  all  his  own  liberty  in  production, 
and  to  restrict  the  liberty  of  all  others  in  the  exchange 
of  the  things  he  creates.  He  cannot  himself  circulate 
his  commodity.  If  he  allows  others  to  do  so,  he  is  at 
the  mercy  of  competition  in  his  own  product,  and  at  the 
mercy  of  combination  in  all  products  save  his  own.  He 
is,  indeed,  at  the  mercy  of  a  twofold  competition  and  of 
a  twofold  combination.  Capitalists  and  workers  in 


438  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

other  industries  buy  the  product  of  the  farm  in  an  open 
market  where  competition  rules  supreme.  The  farmer 
himself  buys  in  a  closed  market  in  which  capitalists 
and  workers  are  alike  protected  by  combination. 
He  has  convinced  himself  that  combination  is  the  only 
method  whereby  he  can  be  enriched.  But  he  finds 
that  he  cannot  practise  combination  in  a  private  way 
by  any  method  he  can  think  of.  Hence  he  demands 
that  he  be  given  the  benefit  of  the  only  other  method 
he  can  think  of,  and  that  is  the  method  of  govern- 
ment ownership. 

All  that  is  needed  for  the  successful  combination 
of  farming  capital  is  an  efficient  system  of  communi- 
cation, which  would  place  in  the  hands  of  the  farming 
classes  the  power  of  organization  now  held  alike  by 
capital  and  labor  in  other  branches  of  industry.  If 
such  a  system  were  discovered,  the  farmer  would 
quickly  withdraw  his  demand  for  government  inter- 
ference in  the  sale  of  his  product.  He  would  then 
demand  that  government  leave  him  alone,  just  as  do 
the  "trust"  capitalists  now.  But  in  that  event  we 
should  see  the  demand  for  government  interference 
quickly  shifting  to  all  other  classes  of  capitalists  and 
producers.  For  if  the  farmer  is  at  a  disadvantage 
now,  the  rest  of  society  would  be  at  a  greater  dis- 
advantage then.  The  farmer  is  aggrieved  because 
he  is  forced  to  buy  his  manufactured  goods  in  a 
market  closed  to  competition.  How  would  other 
producers  feel  if  they  were  forced  to  buy  their 
food  in  a  market  controlled  by  the  farmer  ?  When 
competition  would  vanish  from  a  market  at  the  very 
source  of  life  itself,  what  power  but  the  power  of 
government  could  ease  the  situation?  And  how 


X  METHODS   OF  COMMUNICATION  439 

could  it  ease  that  situation  except  by  becoming  a 
capitalist  itself  ? 

The  true  relation  of  government  and  capital  would 
here  force  themselves  on  the  minds  of  all.  The  farmer 
could  not  excuse  a  forced  rise  in  prices  as  does  the 
manufacturing  capitalist  at  present.  The  farmer 
can  never  plead  poverty,  economy  in  production,  or 
threatened  failure  in  business,  even  though  he  were 
infinitely  poorer  than  his  congener,  the  manufacturer. 
He  can  always  produce  enough  to  sustain  his  own  life 
and  that  of  his  help.  He  can  never  plead  deteriora- 
tion of  his  plant,  or  advance  the  argument  that  he 
must  close  his  plant  if  he  does  not  raise  prices.  For 
his  capital,  or  the  most  important  part  of  it,  is  inde- 
structible, and  gains  rather  than  loses  by  temporary 
disuse.  The  farmer  has  no  impelling  motive  for 
producing  great  quantities  of  wealth  because  food 
is  perishable,  and  over-production  of  food  is  mere 
waste  of  wealth  and  labor,  and  of  benefit  to  nobody. 

The  very  heart  of  the  farmer's  grievance  lies  in 
the  fact  that  he  is  unable  to  use  the  instruments  of 
communication  for  the  purpose  of  compounding  his 
capital.  He  sees  that  other  industries  can  and  do  use 
them  freely.  He  himself  uses  them  for  every  pur- 
pose save  that  which  he  most  desires.  And  if  his 
moral  sense  revolts  against  this  apparent  injustice, 
it  is  only  what  should  be  expected  in  the  circum- 
stances. Farmers  love  luxury  as  much  as  do  other 
people.  They  desire  to  get  rich  as  quickly  as  they 
can.  They  have  found  that  their  desires  are  thwarted 
in  some  way  they  do  not  clearly  understand.  There- 
fore they  demand  that  government  shall  help  them, 
and,  it  must  be  said,  there  is  not  the  slightest  super- 


44O  THE   LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

stition  in  their  view  of  the  power  of  government  in 
this  respect.  They  do  not  expect  that  government 
can  create  wealth  by  ipse  dixit ;  all  they  seek  is  to 
use  their  power  as  rulers  to  force  the  rest  of  the 
people  to  give  larger  quantities  of  wealth  in  exchange 
for  agricultural  products  —  and  this  can  be  done  the 
very  moment  that  government  uses  its  taxing  power 
for  that  purpose.  The  very  force  of  circumstances  is 
thus  seen  to  make  of  the  farmer  a  statesman  of  ex- 
traordinary clearness  of  perception. 

When  we  look  at  other  aspects  of  industry,  the 
importance  of  instruments  of  communication  is  seen 
to  be  prime.  We  have  already  observed  how  these 
things  are  capitalistic  in  their  nature ;  how  their 
primary  purpose  is  the  creation,  the  circulation,  or 
the  accumulation  of  wealth ;  how  the  use  to  which 
they  are  put  is  always  concerned  first  of  all  with  the 
economic  welfare  of  the  individuals  who  own  them,  and 
secondly  with  the  welfare  of  the  many  who  use  them. 
The  economic  life  of  the  individual  is  hence  seen  to 
be  the  bottom  motive  in  all  inventions  and  industries 
of  this  kind.  But  an  important  effect  follows  upon 
the  spread  of  these  industries.  Industries  which  help 
the  systematic  diffusion  of  intelligence  also  serve  to 
lessen  crime.  It  is  a  noteworthy  fact  that  material 
and  moral  progress  are  always  found  together.  In 
brilliantly  illuminated  cities  the  burglar  and  the  high- 
wayman find  less  opportunity  for  work  than  in  cities 
poorly  illuminated.  The  daily  newspaper,  primarily 
used  for  the  enrichment  of  the  proprietor,  is  dis- 
covered to  be  an  important  instrument  for  the  pallia- 
tion of  public  and  private  wrong.  To  the  telegraph 
and  the  railroad  may  be  directly  ascribed  the  decline 


X  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION  441 

of  brigandage.  Further  examples  of  this  general  law 
of  moral  progress  will  quickly  suggest  themselves  to 
the  reader. 

Let  us  see  how  economic  and  moral  progress  is 
furthered  by  the  daily  newspaper.  The  journalist- 
proprietor  himself  may  be  highly  immoral  privately. 
He  may  be  a  thief,  a  corrupt  politician,  a  man  whose 
private  desires  may  be  in  direct  conflict  with  the  public 
good.  But  if  his  first  desire  be  the  possession  of 
wealth  he  must,  perforce,  use  his  capital  for  the 
spread  of  knowledge  which  leads  to  the  correction 
of  public  wrongs.  Practical  experience  teaches  him 
the  truth  of  the  old  economic  proverb  that  the  good 
of  all  is  the  good  of  each.  He  cannot  suppress  news 
of  public  wrongs  if  his  journal  is  to  have  a  profitable 
circulation.  The  public  cares  little  for  the  private 
character  of  a  producer  so  long  as  the  product  sup- 
plies a  want.  News  of  political  abuses  cannot  be 
suppressed  by  one  publication  so  long  as  such  news 
is  printed  by  other  publications  of  like  kind.  If  it  is 
published  by  one,  it  must  be  published  by  all  on  pain 
of  economic  distress.  Thus  the  motive  of  all  daily 
newspapers  is  a  compound  one.  The  primary  motive 
is  the  enrichment  of  the  owner ;  the  secondary  motive, 
arising  from  and  limiting  the  primary,  is  the  public 
good. 

If  power  of  any  kind  is  sought  by  the  owner  of  a 
daily  newspaper,  he  can  acquire  that  power  and  retain 
it  only  by  conduct  which  at  once  enriches  himself  and 
conserves  the  public  good.  He  cannot  enlarge  his 
wealth  without  promoting  the  common  welfare.  His 
political  influence  will  depend  upon  the  popularity  of 
his  journal.  And  this  popularity  is  itself  dependent 


442  THE  LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

upon  the  freedom  with  which  the  journal  supplies  its 
readers  with  news  conserving  the  public  good.  The 
so-called  "  policies  "  of  newspapers  have  nothing  to  do 
with  public  morality.  Policy  is  generally  made  to  fit 
the  circulation.  Preaching  from  an  editorial  chair  is 
chiefly  a  form  of  cant  which  has  very  little  effect 
upon  the  public  mind.  When  editorial  opinions  con- 
form with  popular  opinions,  they  are  approved.  It  is 
popular  opinion  that  moulds  editorial  opinion — not  the 
reverse,  as  some  deluded  journalists  imagine.  When 
editorial  opinion  goes  counter  to  popular  opinion,  the 
circulation  falls.  The  moral  codes  of  newspapers  are 
an  effect,  not  a  cause,  of  social  progress.  How  true 
is  this  assertion  we  can  see  when  we  try  to  imagine 
the  economic  disaster  overtaking  that  journal  which 
would  advocate  the  robbery  of  the  people  by  their 
public  servants.  The  editor  might  privately  assist  in 
such  robbery,  but  he  would  be  forced  publicly  to  con- 
demn it,  or  he  would  lose  his  circulation,  his  wealth, 
and  his  influence  together. 

Thus  it  is  seen  that  the  daily  newspaper  —  the 
most  efficient  instrument  of  communication  in  ad- 
vanced communities  —  is  at  the  same  time  the  most 
potent  instrument  for  the  correction  of  public  wrong ; 
and  that  this  fact  is  entirely  due  to  the  selfish  desires 
of  men  for  wealth  and  for  power  of  other  kinds.  But 
the  daily  newspaper  is  more  than  this  :  it  serves  to 
increase  material  prosperity,  to  accelerate  trade,  to 
promote  public  taste  in  art,  and  quickly  to  disseminate 
scientific  knowledge  in  a  manner  possible  to  no  other 
instrument  of  communication.  The  taste  and  the 
knowledge  it  disseminates  may  not  be  of  the  most 
highly  aesthetic  or  scientific  quality  ;  but  there  can  be 


X  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION  443 

no  question  as  to  its  quantity.  If  newspapers  have 
not  the  accuracy  of  the  text-book  in  matters  of  science, 
it  is  only  because  journalists  are  not  universal  sciolists. 
But  the  tendency  in  this  respect  is  upwards.  Accu- 
racy in  scientific  news  is  more  in  demand  than  ever 
before.  In  America,  especially,  great  care  is  taken 
to  publish  correct  accounts  of  important  inventions 
and  discoveries  in  the  mechanical  arts.  Scientific 
matters  in  general  are  not  so  accurately  reported,  but 
the  movement  here  is  also  upward.  For  there  is  a 
growing  disposition  among  scientific  men  to  discuss 
profound  questions  in  the  daily  press.  This  change 
in  disposition  is  due  to  the  general  spread  of  scientific 
knowledge,  produced,  in  large  part,  by  the  daily 
paper  itself. 

Popular  interest  in  scientific  matters  must  always 
be  measured  by  the  law  of  moral  proximation.  If  the 
question  is  one  of  life,  health,  or  wealth,  popular  in- 
terest in  it  will  be  strong.  In  the  treatment  of  all 
such  facts  the  effort  of  the  daily  paper  is  to  secure  as 
accurate  and  as  complete  information  as  possible. 
Thus  the  general  public  in  America  possesses  a  pro- 
found knowledge  of  hygiene  and  disease.  Americans 
are  more  widely  familiar  with  the  causes  of  disease 
and  its  remedies  than  the  public  of  any  other  country 
in  the  world.  The  germ  theory,  and  the  experiments 
going  forward  in  the  laboratories,  are  familiar  to 
everybody  who  reads  the  newspapers.  Americans, 
in  the  mass,  are  more  familiar  with  the  labors  of 
European  bacterialists  than  are  the  masses  of  Euro- 
peans themselves.  Every  important  discovery  in 
pathology  and  surgery  is  at  once  cabled  to  the  United 
States,  and  is  widely  known  and  discussed  on  the 


444  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

same  day,  or  the  day  after  the  announcement  of  it  is 
made  in  Europe.  The  majority  of  Americans  do  not 
understand  the  scientific  methods  by  which  the  dis- 
coveries are  made.  But  the  very  rapid  spread  of  the 
news  of  the  results  proves  the  quantity  and  the  qual- 
ity of  American  instruments  of  communication.  Mill- 
ions of  people  in  towns  and  villages,  remote  from 
the  great  cities,  are  enlightened  within  a  few  hours 
of  an  important  scientific  discovery  made  in  Europe, 
while  as  yet  the  majority  of  Europeans  are  in  igno- 
rance of  the  discovery,  and  even  of  the  name  of  the 
science  by  which  it  has  been  accomplished. 

The  American  newspaper  is  frequently  the  object 
of  European  journalistic  contempt,  just  as  Euro- 
pean railroads  and  telegraphs  are  objects  of  Chinese 
contempt — and  for  the  selfsame  reason.  But  the 
American  newspaper  is  an  instrument  of  education 
compared  with  which  the  European  newspaper  is 
contemptuously  insignificant.  Of  European  countries 
England  alone  has  a  newspaper  press  comparable 
even  remotely  with  that  of  America,  either  in  freedom 
or  in  educational  capacity.  England  possesses  su- 
perior technical  journals,  but  these  are  not  read  by 
the  masses,  and  we  are  here  concerned  with  the  dif- 
fusion and  not  the  origination  of  scientific  knowledge. 
The  American  daily  papers  copy  freely  from  British 
technical  journals,  and  technical  news  is  frequently 
cabled  to  America.  The  general  intelligence  of  the 
two  countries  can  best  be  gauged  by  a  comparison  of 
their  daily  press.  The  American  newspaper  is  an 
intellectual  puzzle  to  the  British  journalist.  He  can- 
not understand  it  because  there  is  no  demand  among 
his  own  people  for  an  intellectual  product  of  that  kind. 


X  METHODS   OF  COMMUNICATION  445 

Experiments  made  in  England  to  publish  a  daily  pa- 
per with  the  American  methods  have  all  been  failures, 
and  must  continue  to  be  failures  until  British  intelli- 
gence demands  a  product  like  that  which  sells  freely 
in  the  United  States. 

But  a  comparison  between  the  newspapers  of  the 
two  countries  will  not  only  show  that  Americans  are 
more  widely  informed  in  science  than  are  Britons. 
It  will  also  show  that  they  are  more  moral.  News- 
papers reflect  the  moral  as  well  as  the  intellectual 
capacity  of  their  readers.  The  Briton  who  is  amazed 
at  the  free  publication  of  criminal  news  in  American 
journals,  should  remember  that  his  transatlantic  cousins 
are  more  deeply  interested  than  are  Britons  in  crime 
of  every  kind.  And  so  far  from  this  being  an  indict- 
ment of  the  moral  sense  of  Americans,  it  is  really  the 
reverse.  A  most  heinous  murder  in  the  poor  quar- 
ters of  London,  or  the  dead  body  of  a  man  or  woman 
(of  the  slums)  found  in  the  Thames,  has  small  con- 
cern for  the  general  British  public.  Little  notice  of 
it  is  taken  by  the  daily  press ;  whereas  in  America 
an  event  like  these  is  chronicled  fully  and  is  read  and 
discussed  with  avidity  by  the  public.  Why?  Be- 
cause Americans  have  a  lower  moral  "  tone "  than 
Britons  ?  Hardly. 

In  America  the  life  of  a  man,  whether  he  be  rich 
or  poor,  is  a  matter  of  the  highest  importance.  When 
grievous  wrong  has  been  done  to  any  individual,  the 
public  wants  to  know  of  it.  The  people  wish  to  find 
out  all  the  details,  but  not  because  the  public  is  mor- 
bidly curious,  —  for  it  is  not.  They  are  interested  in 
the  lives  of  their  fellow-men,  because  life,  with  them, 
is  sacred,  whether  it  pertains  to  a  high  or  a  lowly  per- 


446  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

sonality.  In  America  all  men  are  politically  equal 
and  potentially  rich.  Whereas  in  England  the  life 
of  a  common  man  is  not  so  sacred  as  that  of  a  lord, 
and  the  life  and  person  of  the  monarch  are  more 
sacred  than  those  of  any  of  his  subjects.  The  grav- 
ity of  the  wrong,  and  not  the  personality  of  the 
wronged  individual,  is  the  primary  factor  in  the  moral 
judgments  of  Americans.  In  England  a  prince  may 
do  violence  to  the  person  of  a  common  man,  and 
escape  with  no  punishment  even  if  the  individual 
wronged  can  secure  legal  process.  The  British  public 
is  disposed  to  make  light  of  such  a  matter.  But  an 
atrocity  of  this  kind  would  be  punished  in  the  United 
States  as  it  deserved.  No  political  office-holder 
could  so  disregard  the  rights  of  his  fellow-men  with- 
out swift  and  sure  retribution,  legal  as  well  as  social, 
if  the  outraged  person  desired  to  prosecute  the 
offender.  It  is  hence  seen  that  when  Americans 
are  interested  in  the  details  of  crime,  that  fact  is  not 
so  much  due  to  a  "  low  moral  tone  "  as  to  a  delicate 
appreciation  of  the  rights  of  all  men  whatever  be 
their  wealth  or  station ;  and  this  appreciation  does 
not  seem  to  be  the  general  rule  in  the  most  enlight- 
ened, richest,  and  freest  country  of  Europe. 

It  is  to  satisfy  this  purely  moral  want  that  Ameri- 
can newspapers  freely  publish  the  details  of  criminal 
news.  To  fill  it  newspaper  agents  frequently  assume 
the  detective  function  of  the  police  in  a  way  which 
often  embarrasses  the  work  of  that  branch  of  gov- 
ernment. Yet  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  publi- 
cation of  criminal  news  secures  the  arrest  of  the 
evil-doer  more  often  than  it  enables  him  to  escape. 
That  publication  is  often  of  material  assistance  to  the 


X  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION  447 

police,  who  are  themselves  careful  readers  of  criminal 
news. 

From  the  foregoing  facts  we  are  warranted  in  the 
conclusion  that  the  daily  newspaper,  in  America,  has 
been  the  means  of  developing  and  clarifying  social 
consciousness  in  a  high  degree.  It  is  this  superior 
social  consciousness  which  gives  the  American  a 
power  of  self-government  that  seems  to  puzzle  the 
most  eminent  scholars  of  Europe.  The  average 
American  —  even  of  foreign  birth  —  has  motives  for 
self-government  quite  unknown  to  the  average  Euro- 
pean. Having  more  to  lose,  and  more  to  gain,  he 
has  acquired  habits  of  self-restraint  far  beyond  the 
conception  of  his  poorer  fellow  in  Europe.  This  fact 
is  illustrated  by  statistics  of  alcohol  in  America  and 
elsewhere.  England,  with  a  population  half  the  size 
of  the  United  States,  consumes  three  times  as  much 
alcohol  as  do  the  people  of  the  republic.  The  king- 
dom has  three  times  the  drunkenness  of  the  republic 
and  only  half  the  population.  These  quantities  are 
not  relative.  They  are  absolute.  Thirty  million 
people  in  England  consume  three  times  as  much 
strong  drink  as  do  seventy  million  people  in  the 
States ! 

European  historians  have  always  been  disposed  to 
discuss  the  political  equality  of  America  as  a  "  fool's 
dream."  Americans  have  not  been  quite  able  to  see 
the"  force  of  the  comment.  With  this  political  equal- 
ity they  have  managed  to  grow  into  the  richest  people 
of  the  earth.  In  this  dream  of  theirs  they  have  out- 
stripped the  world  in  industry.  They  have  built  up 
a  system  of  economy  which,  while  it  pays  to  its 
workers  the  highest  of  wages,  sets  down  its  products 


448  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

in  the  markets  of  monarchies  at  prices  which  elude 
the  productive  capacity  of  monarchic  capitalists. 
They  have  a  system  of  free  education  which  England 
has  not  even  approached.  They  are  driving  the 
statesmen  of  monarchic  countries  to  expedients  in 
government  that  are  no  less  than  expressions  of  blank 
despair ;  and  after  a  century  of  history  this  political 
equality,  which  was  a  "  fool's  dream  "  one  hundred 
years  ago  and  less,  is  found  to  be  the  most  vivid 
reality  in  the  world.  If  European  scholars  are  wait- 
ing for  the  downfall  of  a  political  and  economic  sys- 
tem like  this,  the  best  that  can  be  said  of  them  is  that 
they  are  afflicted  with  a  superstition  arising  out  of 
their  environment.  A  more  cautious  inquiry  into 
political  causes  will  probably  serve  to  clear  up  their 
doubts. 

But  let  us  return  to  the  question  of  strong  drink. 
Drunkenness  is  highly  repugnant  to  the  mind  of  the 
average  American.  For  him  it  is  one  of  the  most 
immoral  of  sins.  Is  this  true  of  the  British  mind  ? 
In  America  the  common  table  beverage  is  water, 
while  in  England  it  is  beer.  The  British  bar-maid  is 
something  the  average  American  cannot  understand. 
To  him  the  idea  is  abhorrent ;  while,  to  the  Briton,  it 
is  natural  and  just.  It  may  be  argued  by  the  Eng- 
lishman that  there  is  really  nothing  wrong  in  this 
social  custom ;  that  it  is  not  wrong  for  a  young 
woman  to  dispense  liquor  in  a  public  place  to  men  in 
the  act  of  becoming  drunk ;  and  it  may  be  argued 
further  that  this  institution  does  not  disclose  a  low 
"moral  tone"  in  the  entire  community.  The  Eng- 
lishman may  go  farther ;  he  may  say  that  the  tap- 
room filled  with  drunken  women  of  the  poorer  classes 


X  METHODS   OF   COMMUNICATION  449 

—  not  sexually  vicious  women  at  all,  but  "  honest  " 
women,  with  children  —  is  a  thing  which  is  really  of 
no  moral  consequence.  The  Englishman  may  hold 
to  all  these  views ;  in  which  case  we  can  only  say 
that  his  notions  of  morality  are  very  different  from 
those  of  the  average  American.  But  if  he  repudi- 
ates this  view  of  things ;  if  he  holds  that  such  prac- 
tices are  truly  immoral,  then  he  must  admit  that  as 
these  things  are  entirely  absent  from  the  social  life 
of  the  United  States,  and,  to  Americans,  are  the 
objects  of  utmost  abhorrence,  the  general  "  moral 
tone  "  in  America  is  higher  than  in  England. 

The  moral  ideas  of  Americans  concerning  alcohol 
are  unique  in  Christendom.  The  most  bitter  preju- 
dices prevail  against  many  public  men  simply  be- 
cause they  are  not  fanatical  prohibitionists.  In  many 
of  the  states  the  manufacture  and  sale  of  alcoholic 
beverages  is  forbidden  by  law  under  severe  punish- 
ment, and  great  tracts  of  country  and  city  in  other 
states  are  under  severe  prohibitive  restriction.  In 
many  of  the  larger  cities  dram-shops  are  forbidden 
within  radial  districts  of  schools,  churches,  and  pub- 
lic parks.  And  in  country  places  no  man  can  be 
elected  to  a  high  position  if  he  is  connected  with  the 
liquor  industry,  or  is  generally  known  freely  to  in- 
dulge himself  in  strong  drink.  So  powerful  is  this 
public  sentiment  against  drunkenness  in  America, 
that  the  foreigner  visiting  the  country  is  constantly 
met  with  fretful  circumstances  which  seem  to  him 
to  be  the  product  of  a  rampant  spirit  of  puritanism. 

But  this  spirit  does  not  pertain  to  strong  drink 
alone.  It  pertains,  too,  to  the  use  of  tobacco.  With 
the  exception  of  two  or  three  Christian 


45O  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

clergymen  may  not  use  tobacco  and  remain  free 
from  moral  reprobation  ;  and  these  clergymen  all 
belong  to  creeds  adhered  to  by  the  richest  and  the 
middling  rich  classes.  The  Catholics,  the  Episco- 
palians, and  the  Evangelical  Lutherans  in  America, 
among  whom  the  clergy  are  allowed  the  use  of 
tobacco  and  strong  drink,  are,  on  the  whole,  the 
poorest  religious  classes  in  the  United  States.  There 
is  one  form  of  tobacco  alike  condemned  by  users  and 
non-users.  That  is  tobacco  made  into  cigarettes. 
The  practice  of  smoking  cigarettes  is  regarded  with 
contempt  by  everybody,  even  by  cigarette  smokers 
themselves,  and  is  regarded  as  positively  wicked  by 
a  large  majority  of  the  people.  When  one  remem- 
bers that  these  unique  moral  ideas  concerning  alcohol 
and  tobacco  are  held  by  the  richest  and  most  pros- 
perous, and  possibly  the  freest  people  in  the  world, 
we  submit  that  they  are  significant. 

The  clarity  and  continuity  of  social  consciousness 
in  America  can  be  traced  to  no  cause  other  than  the 
large  quantity  and  the  high  efficiency  of  the  instru- 
ments of  communication  in  use  in  that  country. 
Ideas  of  any  kind  could  not  be  so  rapidly  and  clearly 
propagated  without  such  instruments  ;  and  this  asser- 
tion will  hardly  need  any  demonstration  other  than 
the  statement  of  it.  Very  vivid  and  very  clear  ideas 
can  exist  in  any  community ;  but  the  rapidity  .with 
which  they  can  be  spread  about  will  depend  alto- 
gether on  the  efficiency  of  the  things  used  for  intel- 
ligencing,  and  the  extent  to  which  they  are  generally 
applied.  It  is  true  also  that  moral  ideas  are  caused, 
at  least  in  some  degree,  by  the  facility  with  which 
intelligence  is  passed  about  among  men.  Some 
repetition  may  be  made  here  with  profit. 


X  METHODS   OF  COMMUNICATION  451 

In  Chapters  VII  and  VIII  we  noted  that  the 
peculiar  moral  characters  of  the  people  of  the  Amer- 
ican republic  were  produced  by  the  general  diffu- 
sion of  wealth  in  that  community.  As  a  citizen 
grows  rich  he  grows  moral  also.  Having  many 
rights  which  he  desires  shall  be  respected,  it  is  to  his 
interest  to  see  that  similar  rights  of  others  are  as  well 
protected  as  his  own.  Thus  he  is  found  ranged  on 
the  side  of  law  and  order,  and  his  valuation  of  hon- 
esty and  morality  is  correspondingly  high.  If  Amer- 
icans are  more  moral  than  Europeans,  it  is  therefore 
because  they  are  richer.  But  general  morality 
depends  upon  general  diffusion  of  wealth ;  and  if 
diffusion  is  helped  by  efficient  methods  of  communi- 
cation, then  these  methods  are  themselves  a  cause  of 
moral  progress.  We  can  illustrate  this  law  by  a 
simple  example.  Let  us  suppose  that  petroleum  be 
discovered  over  a  large  area  of  country.  With  quick 
methods  of  communication,  the  whole  community 
is  apprised  of  the  discovery  in  a  very  short  time. 
Numbers  of  individuals  are  made  richer  immedi- 
ately. There  is  new  demand  for  labor  in  the  oil 
fields,  and  in  the  refining  of  the  crude  oil.  Railroad 
traffic  is  increased,  new  quantities  of  rolling  stock 
are  in  demand,  and  the  industries  of  lumber,  of  min- 
ing, of  steel,  of  car  building,  are  very  appreciably 
enlivened.  In  addition  to  all  this,  the  community 
at  once  divides  the  benefit  of  an  immediate  decline 
in  the  prices  of  consumable  oil.  Here  are  distinct 
effects  of  quick  intelligencing  upon  the  creation  and 
diffusion  of  wealth.  Let  us  now  look  at  the  same 
fact  from  the  historical  point  of  view. 

The  politico-moral  code  of  the  United  States  was, 


452  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

in  the  beginning  of  the  nation's  life,  the  product  of 
the  industrial  development  of  Europe,  and  especially 
of  England.  The  colonies  had  derived  their  moral 
notions  of  property  from  the  mother  country,  but 
these  notions  had  been  considerably  modified  by  the 
new  and  the  freer  environment.  Unlimited  quantities 
of  land  had  served  to  equalize  political  rights  and  the 
moral  ideas  associated  with  them.  This  freedom  of 
ownership  in  land  lessened  the  importance  of  nobility 
which,  in  England,  was  chiefly  grounded  upon  large 
holdings  in  land.  The  newly  rich  landowner  in  the 
colonies  would  hence  be  a  more  important  personage 
than  the  impoverished  nobleman.  He  would  also  be 
the  equal  of  the  rich  nobleman,  for  nobility  was  not 
an  organically  familiar  fact  in  the  new  country.  But 
this  levelling  of  rank  would  soon  end  in  the  almost 
total  disappearance  of  nobility ;  and  the  idea  would 
become  repugnant  to  Americans;  for  they  would 
readily  perceive  that  while  their  potential  equality 
might  enable  them  to  become  rich,  it  could  never 
enable  them  to  become  noble. 

In  forming  their  political  code,  therefore,  they 
eliminated  from  it  nobility  of  every  kind,  as  well  as 
the  royal  power  from  which  it  depends.  The  idea 
was  not  repugnant  to  all  of  the  citizens ;  it  was 
abhorred  only  by  the  great  majority.  The  few  could 
not  conceive  of  any  plan  which  would  confer  equal 
opportunity  of  rising  to  nobility  upon  all  of  the 
people.  And  it  was  obvious  that  such  equal  oppor- 
tunity could  not  be  given  to  one  class  of  citizens 
only ;  for  what  class  or  classes  were  to  be  preferred, 
and  what  classes  excluded  ?  The  result  was  that  the 
framers  of  the  government  were  forced  to  give  every 


X  METHODS   OF  COMMUNICATION  453 

free  citizen  a  perfectly  equal  share  in  the  political 
management  of  the  state,  or  a  right  to  that  share  if 
he  desired  to  take  it.  The  colonials  did  not  abolish 
sovereignty.  By  no  means.  They  magnified  it,  rein- 
forced it,  and  made  it  perpetually  irremovable,  inde- 
structible, and  absolute,  by  making  every  citizen  a 
sovereign  power  in  himself.  In  fact,  the  colonials 
could  do  nothing  else.  Sovereignty  is  a  divisible 
thing.  It  can  be  assumed  by  one  or  several  or  many 
if  they  have  the  power  to  appropriate  it ;  and  as  all 
citizens  were  co-powerful,  action  could  only  issue  in  a 
perfectly  equal  division  of  the  thing  most  desired  by 
all.  A  similar  issue  is  now  emerging  from  the  eco- 
nomic progress  of  the  republic.  (If  we  substitute  the 
term  "  social  capital "  for  "  political  power,"  we  shall 
see  our  way  clear  to  the  details  of  the  method  by 
which  the  product  of  social  effort  must  be  equally 
divided  among  producers.  The  reader  can  work  this 
matter  out  for  himself.  We  are  here  concerned  with 
social  consciousness.) 

The  rapid  industrial  growth  of  the  United  States, 
since  the  war  of  emancipation,  has  been  the  cause 
of  moral  development  producing  a  wide  divergence 
between  the  American  republic  and  the  countries  of 
Europe.  The  character  of  the  state  has  not  changed 
because  the  diffusion  of  political  power  is  complete. 
Every  citizen  is  the  actual  political  equal  of  the 
others.  Each  is  co-sovereign  with  all,  and  potential 
equality  for  distinction  is  also  perfectly  equal.  But  if 
the  substantial  government  can  never  be  changed,  the 
method  by  which  the  citizen  uses  his  power  can  be 
changed  in  important  respects.  At  present  the  citi- 
zen elects  a  representative  who  acts  for  him  in  codify- 


454  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

ing  and  enforcing  the  popular  will.  But  why  was 
this  system  adopted  by  the  people  ?  It  was  of  a 
certainty  not  adopted  for  any  political  reason  con- 
ceivable. The  American  citizen  of  a  century  ago 
was  quite  capable  of  voting  for  or  against  any  law  he 
desired  to  pass  for  the  regulation  of  his  own  life. 
Why  then  did  he  see  fit  to  delegate  his  power  to  a 
representative  ? 

The  answer  is  obvious.  It  was  an  economic  and 
not  a  political  motive  that  moved  him.  The  people 
could  not  assemble  in  parliament  together.  There 
were  no  means  by  which  all  the  citizens  could  vote 
upon  questions  of  legislation.  Even  the  election  of 
representatives  was  a  slow  and  painful  process. 
Instruments  of  communication  were  few,  and  such 
as  did  exist  were  insufficient.  But  with  easily  avail- 
able instruments  of  this  kind  there  could  be  no  con- 
ceivable reason  why  the  citizen  should  surrender  his 
power  into  the  hands  of  another  man.  Could  he 
himself  exercise  his  sovereign  power  by  voting  in  his 
proper  person,  thereby  assuring  himself  that  his  sov- 
ereign will  would  be  recorded  on  the  statute-books  of 
the  nation,  he  could  not  possibly  refrain  from  exercis- 
ing his  power  in  this  way  if  he  exercised  it  at  all. 
With  sufficient  and  efficient  means  of  communication 
there  could  be  no  longer  any  conceivable  need  for 
representative  legislation,  or  adjudication,  and  these 
methods  of  enforcing  popular  will  would  vanish.1 

1  In  political  science  a  distinction  is  drawn  between  the  state  and  the 
government.  The  state  may  be  democratic  while  the  government  is 
aristocratic  or  monarchic  ;  or  the  state  may  be  monarchic  or  aristo- 
cratic while  the  government  is  aristocrat,  or  even  democratic.  But  the 
government  is  always  the  creature  and  servant  of  the  state.  In  a 


X  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION  455 

Royal  power  has  constantly  declined  in  the  past 
The  power  of  the  representative  is  rapidly  declining 
in  the  present.  The  growth  of  the  daily  newspaper 
in  America  has  been  the  cause  of  a  remarkable 
curtailment  of  the  power  of  the  representative  legis- 
lator. The  citizen,  alive  and  alert  to  public  questions 
through  the  perusal  of  the  news  spread  daily  before 
him,  uses  the  mails  and  telegraph  to  keep  in  touch 
with  his  representative  at  the  capital,  and  important 
matters  are  thus  decided  frequently  and  positively. 
The  administration  at  Washington  was  opposed  to 
the  late  war  with  Spain.  Many  of  the  representa- 
tives were  opposed  to  it.  But  popular  pressure  was 
so  extreme  that  Congress  was  forced  to  declare  war, 
and  the  president  was  forced  to  pursue  it.  Lincoln's 
call  for  volunteers  came  as  a  surprise  to  the  country. 
McKinley  called  for  volunteers  because  the  country 
told  him  to  do  so. 

All  these  facts  have  a  moral  significance,  but  their 
roots  lie  in  the  wealth  of  the  nation  and  in  the  com- 
paratively high  degree  in  which  that  wealth  is  dif- 
fused. If  we  do  not  find  similar  facts  in  the  most 
progressive  community  of  Europe,  it  is  only  because 

perfectly  equilibrated  group,  having  economic  and  political  equality  of 
the  kind  we  have  assumed  to  be  the  end  of  social  motion,  this  distinc- 
tion would  vanish.  For  the  state  would  consist  of  all  the  people,  and  a 
large  majority  of  the  people  would  make  up  the  mechanism  of  govern- 
ment itself.  The  minority,  in  their  economic  life,  would  be  above  the 
state;  for  the  economic  power  of  the  state  would  be  surrendered  into 
their  hands.  The  distinction  at  present  drawn  between  state  and 
government  is,  therefore,  a  recognition  of  the  actual  facts  of  past  and 
present  stages  in  social  evolution.  But  such  distinction  cannot  be 
made  in  a  pure  theory  of  social  life  which  deals  with  ideal  quantities 
rather  than  with  concrete  things. 


456  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP, 

that  community  is  comparatively  undeveloped.  The 
average  Briton  is  not  as  rich,  and  hence  not  as  moral, 
as  intellectual,  and  as  free  as  is  the  average  American. 
The  instruments  of  communication  at  his  command 
are  less  numerous,  less  efficient,  and  less  accessible 
than  those  in  the  new  country.  If  the  citizen  of 
England  could  command  the  same  power  of  wealth 
and  communication  as  his  American  cousin,  he  would 
be  as  moral,  as  intelligent,  and  as  free  as  the  latter ; 
and  this  truth  passes  from  theory  into  fact  when  the 
poor  Englishman  becomes  a  naturalized  citizen  of  the 
United  States.  His  capacity  for  the  use  of  his  new- 
found wealth  grows  rapidly  with  possession.  And 
this  fact  would  seem  to  account  for  the  facility  with 
which  America  absorbs  Europeans  of  every  country 
and  of  every  class,  and  quickly  converts  them  into 
active,  intelligent,  and  useful  citizens. 

These  forces  react  profoundly  upon  the  relations 
of  government  to  capital.  The  effect  is  seen  in  the 
state  of  American  public  opinion  discussed  at  length 
in  the  three  preceding  chapters.  It  is  not  necessary 
here  again  to  go  over  the  same  ground.  We  need 
only  note  that  to  the  causes  of  social  progress  we 
have  already  developed  we  can  add  the  cause  that  is 
found  in  methods  and  instruments  of  communication. 
The  flow  of  social  forces  toward  economic  equality 
draws  into  itself  this  confluent  force  which  lifts 
society  to  higher  and  higher  levels  of  self-conscious- 
ness. All  forces  which  cannot  thus  be  compounded 
with  social  motion  must  be  eliminated  by  natural 
selection.  We  cannot  imagine  them  as  surviving, 
and  at  the  same  time  imagine  that  social  progress 
will  go  forward.  If  they  are  conceived  to  survive, 


X  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION  457 

we  must  alter  our  definitions  of  social  progress  itself, 
and  definitions  now  accepted  as  self-evident  at  once 
become  self-contradictory. 

At  the  present  point  in  our  discussion  it  is  need- 
ful to  consider  another  important  effect  upon  social 
growth  wrought  out  by  instruments  and  methods  of 
communication.  This  effect  is  the  multiplex  phe- 
nomenon of  sympathy.  It  is  a  fact  of  common  note 
that  the  more  of  suffering  one  beholds,  the  more  in- 
different he  is  to  the  fact.  The  surgeon,  the  nurse, 
and  the  soldier  are  proverbially  unmoved,  at  least 
comparatively  unmoved,  by  the  sight  of  suffering  in 
their  fellow-men.  The  butcher  is  less  concerned  with 
questions  of  cruelty  to  dumb  brutes  than  is  the  person 
who  does  not  earn  a  livelihood  in  the  shambles.  Coal- 
miners  are  always  objects  of  sympathy  for  those  who 
do  not  reside  near  the  mines.  Those  who  have  the 
profoundest  pity  for  victims  of  pain  of  every  kind  are 
the  very  ones  who  are  least  accustomed  to  behold  pain 
of  any  kind. 

This  commonplace  truth  will  assume,  perhaps,  a 
new  significance  when  we  associate  it  with  the  effects 
of  social  motion  as  implied  in  our  law  of  capitalization. 
It  will  be  clear  that  wealth  and  its  diffusion  progressively 
lessen  the  quantity  of  pain  endured  by  a  growing  social 
group.  A  wealthy  community  suffers  less  than  a  poor 
community,  and  hence  its  sympathies  are  profounder, 
more  delicate,  and  more  varied  than  those  of  the 
group  in  which  poverty  and  pain  are  familiar  things. 
A  reform  effected  by  sympathy  is  the  most  thorough 
reform  imaginable,  and  if  the  current  of  sympathy 
flow  strong  and  deep,  the  reform  will  be  permanent 
and  assured. 


458  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

But  it  is  plain  that  sympathy  cannot  act  if  the 
sympathetic  public  have  no  knowledge  of  the  pain 
suffered.  And  this  public  knowledge  can  only  be 
secured  by  efficient  and  sufficient  instruments  of 
communication.  An  evil  may  long  exist  in  any 
community,  and  successfully  resist  correction  if  social 
consciousness  is  not  constantly  held  alive  to  the  need 
of  action.  Action  will  not  be  taken  unless  sufficient 
force  be  brought  to  bear  simultaneously  on  sufficient 
numbers.  Individual  effort,  or  mere  personal  appeal, 
cannot  sustain  this  simultaneous  opinion  unless  the  in- 
dividuals appealed  to  have  a  strong  personal  motive 
to  act  for  their  own  immediate  good.  But  general 
and  simultaneous  appeal  to  the  society  cannot  be 
resisted  if  the  stimulus  be  constantly  applied. 

Let  it  be  desired,  for  example,  to  correct  an  abuse 
of  capitalist  power,  say  in  the  employment  of  child 
labor.  In  a  rich  community  the  motive  for  action  in 
the  majority  of  the  people  will  be  purely  sympathetic. 
That  is  to  say,  the  abuse  is  remote  from  the  persons 
of  those  appealed  to.  The  children  of  the  majority 
are  not  required  to  labor  for  a  living.  The  sympathy 
of  poor  parents  is  blunted  by  poverty;  or,  rather, 
sympathy  has  not  been  developed  in  them  by  the 
possession  of  wealth.  The  antipathy  of  the  majority 
to  child  labor  is  very  strong ;  but  the  majority  cannot 
act  if  it  be  not  reminded  of  the  need  of  action  and  by 
sustained  application  of  the  reminders.  For  this  pur- 
pose the  printing-press  is  the  most  efficient  instrument 
to-day,  and  the  daily  newspaper  is  the  most  efficient 
form  of  the  printing-press.  Child  labor  could  not 
long  exist  in  any  prosperous  community  the  literature 
of  which  would  quickly  expose  every  wrong  done  by 


x  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION  459 

the  capitalist  in  this  respect,  and  would  continue  to 
expose  the  wrong  as  long  as  it  prevailed. 

We  do  not  mean  that  public  sympathy  can  be 
created  by  the  press.  This  follows  by  no  means. 
The  press,  however  free,  could  never  convert  the 
surgeon  into  a  sympathetic  man,  no  matter  how 
much  the  surgeon  might  read.  Neither  can  the  press 
create  delicate  feelings  of  pity  in  the  mind  of  the  per- 
son accustomed  to  squalor  and  want  and  the  pain  they 
cause.  To  make  the  pauper  capable  of  sympathy, 
you  must  first  remove  him  from  pauperism.  And  to 
make  the  capitalist  sympathize  with  his  employees, 
you  must  first  remove  the  painful  circumstances  in 
which  he  is  accustomed  to  live. 

This  can  never  be  done  by  the  pitiless  themselves. 
It  can  never  be  done  by  the  sympathetic  public  if 
that  public  remain  unenlightened  as  to  the  facts. 
But  if  the  source  of  the  enlightenment  be  constantly 
active,  sympathy  must  respond  by  a  law  of  moral 
mechanics.  Once  that  child  labor  be  abolished  in 
this  way,  it  can  never  again  be  reinstituted  as  long  as 
the  press  stimulates  action  by  exposing  every  lapse 
the  moment  the  lapse  occurs. 

By  these  considerations  we  are  drawn  to  the  con- 
clusion that  with  growing  wealth  the  moral  conscious- 
ness of  society  extends  over  larger  areas  progressively. 
The  moral  code  of  the  developing  group  constantly 
multiplies  the  conduct  it  defines  as  wrong.  New  cir- 
cumstances create  new  definitions  of  morality,  and 
that  which  was  right  yesterday  becomes  wrong  to- 
day. Negative  good  becomes  positive  evil.  If  the 
social  mind  be  constantly  alive  to  the  fact  that  pain 
exists  for  some,  the  social  mind  cannot  be  at  peace 


460  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

until  that  pain  is  removed.  The  stimulus  to  social 
consciousness  is  the  efficient  and  sufficient  instrument 
of  communication.  This  complex  of  social  force 
issues  in  social  motion  called  reform.  And  as  social 
motion  has  directly  to  do  with  the  quantity  and  the 
diffusion  of  wealth,  it  is  seen  that  the  relations  of 
government  and  capital  are  interlocked  with  the  sym- 
pathies of  the  individual,  and  with  the  means  whereby 
these  sympathies  are  made  quickly  and  organically 
social. 

From  the  analysis  we  have  here  made  of  social 
consciousness,  the  reader  will  have  inferred  the  me- 
chanical nature  of  the  process.  The  purely  mechani- 
cal character  of  individual  consciousness  has  been 
demonstrated  by  psychology.  The  brain  is  as  much 
a  mechanism  as  are  the  heart,  the  lungs,  the  intes- 
tines, and  the  eye.  The  man  who  carefully  watches 
the  operations  of  his  own  mind  will  find  that  many 
of  them  are  unconscious.  He  will  often  suddenly 
awaken  to  the  fact  that  he  has  been  thinking  "  una- 
wares," just  as  he  often  observes  that  he  winds  his 
watch,  attends  to  the  work  of  his  toilet,  reads  a 
page  or  two  of  a  book,  or  drums  upon  the  table  with 
his  fingers,  without  present  consciousness  of  these 
acts.  The  mechanical  nature  of  the  simpler  opera- 
tions of  the  social  mind  is  even  more  manifest  still. 
The  motions  of  a  regiment  of  soldiers  are  more  evi- 
dently like  those  of  a  machine  than  are  the  actions 
of  an  individual  man.  Yet  the  man  is  as  much  a 
machine  as  is  the  regiment. 

But  the  structure  of  a  man  —  complex  as  it  may 
be  —  is  not  nearly  so  intricate  as  that  of  a  highly 
civilized  society.  Any  single  organ  of  a  society  — 


x  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION  461 

such  as  the  army,  the  legislature,  the  market,  the 
factory  —  is  seen  to  be  mechanical  at  a  glance. 
Structure  and  function  are  here  alike  comparatively 
simple.  But  the  matter  becomes  more  difficult  when 
we  look  at  the  structure  and  the  functioning  of  the 
whole  society  together.  The  interdependent  work- 
ings of  all  the  varied  parts  of  a  social  body  present 
a  highly  complicated  problem. 

It  is  not  difficult,  for  example,  to  understand  the 
organization  and  the  operation  of  a  steel  factory. 
But  when  we  try  to  think  of  all  the  industries  con- 
noted by  a  steel  factory  ;  when  we  include  within  the 
conception  such  industries  as  mining  and  mining 
machinery,  and  their  cognate  and  implied  industries ; 
of  the  factories  and  industries  which  furnish  food  and 
clothing  to  the  workmen,  build  their  homes  and  sup- 
ply their  household  furniture ;  when  we  include  the 
railroad  and  its  confluent  industrial  tributaries,  we 
open  up  the  sciences  of  economics  and  mechanics, 
of  geology  and  botany,  of  chemistry  and  psychology, 
of  mathematics  and  physics,  of  biology  and  tech- 
nology, as  well  as  the  arts  to  which  these  sciences 
are  applied.  And  as  all  of  these  conceptions  have 
to  do  with  the  social  mind,  the  mechanical  nature  of 
social  consciousness,  in  its  entirety,  becomes  highly 
obscure.  Yet  if  we  remember  that  social  action  is 
only  the  synthesis  of  individual  action,  it  will  be  seen 
that  an  analysis  which  reduces  the  one  to  mechanical 
principles  will  likewise  so  reduce  the  other.  The  con- 
sciousness of  a  man  grows  from  his  birth  with  the 
growth  of  his  brain.  His  facility  for  thought  is 
acquired  by  exercise  of  the  brain,  repeated  again  and 
again,  along  the  same  lines  of  action.  Facility  of 


462  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

social  thought  is  controlled  by  the  same  causes,  and, 
with  a  society  as  with  a  man,  thought  determines 
action. 

The  mechanical  nature  of  the  social  mind  is  simply 
illustrated  in  societies  other  than  human.  In  a  stam- 
pede of  a  herd  of  buffalo  the  animals  in  the  middle 
of  the  herd  have  not  the  slightest  notion  of  the  par- 
ticular cause  producing  the  collective  movement. 
Yet  we  can  conceive  that  every  buffalo  in  the  herd 
is  aware  that  some  kind  of  danger  is  afoot.  Here 
the  method  of  communication  is  almost  instantane- 
ous, and  the  herd  moves  with  the  precision  of  a 
single  individual.  The  social  consciousness  of  a 
swarm  of  bees,  in  removing  to  a  new  hive,  is  a  per- 
fect example  of  the  unanimity  which  renders  social 
action  visibly  mechanical.  Every  precaution  is  taken 
for  the  favorable  result  of  the  flight.  Scouts  inform 
the  hive  of  the  discovery  of  the  new  site.  If,  after 
the  swarm  leaves  the  hive,  the  weather  should  sud- 
denly become  unpropitious,  the  bees  return  to  their 
domicile.  Once  successfully  launched  in  the  swarm- 
flight,  the  body  moves  forward  to  its  destination, 
quickly  applies  itself  to  the  work  of  constructing  the 
foundation  and  the  superstructure  of  its  social  habita- 
tion, and  proceeds  forthwith  to  enter  upon  its  normal 
economic  labors. 

Can  we  rationally  deny  to  the  individual  bee,  in 
the  swarm,  a  consciousness  of  the  purpose  of  the 
flight  ?  Can  we  rationally  assume  that  mere  blind 
instinct  impels  it  to  action  of  which  the  purpose  is 
manifestly  known  to  the  bees  leading  the  swarm  to 
the  new  hive  ?  Or  is  it  more  logical  to  assume  that 
each  particular  insect  is  perfectly  aware  of  what  is 


X  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION  463 

going  forward,  as  each  particular  buffalo  or  deer  in 
a  stampeding  herd  is  assumed  to  understand  the 
cause  of  the  general  movement?  If  one  buffalo 
has  sufficient  power  of  mind  to  know  that  when 
danger  threatens  it  is  wise  to  flee  from  it,  why 
should  others  of  the  species  be  less  acute  logicians  ? 
If  one  bee  can  discover  a  favorable  site  for  a  new 
hive,  pass  judgment  upon  it,  and  lead  the  swarm  to 
the  new  location,  why  should  we  assume  that  similar 
powers  of  ratiocination  are  denied  to  other  bees  of 
precisely  similar  structure  ?  And,  finally,  why  should 
we  conclude  that  actions  on  the  part  of  bees,  pre- 
cisely similar  to  actions  of  men,  are  due  to  some 
occult  force  in  the  nature  of  the  insect,  while  in  the 
man  they  are  due  to  the  force  of  reason  ? 

We  confess  we  are  unable  to  perceive  any  differ- 
ence whatever  in  the  mental  force  impelling  a  bee  to 
store  up  honey,  and  that  which  impels  a  man  to  store 
up  wheat.  And  we  are  as  much  at  a  loss  to  see  any 
difference  in  the  mental  force  which  moves  bees  to 
build  cells  of  wax,  and  men  to  build  houses.  The 
simplest  explanation  of  the  facts  would  seem  to  be 
this  :  The  bee  stores  honey  because  experience  has 
taught  it  that  a  store  of  honey  sustains  its  life  when 
honey  is  not  to  be  found  abroad.  It  builds  a  habitation 
in  order  that  it  may  husband  its  supply  of  food,  and  in 
order  to  protect  itself  from  the  inclemency  of  the 
weather.  We  do  not  know  of  any  motive  than  these 
impelling  men  to  lay  up  wheat  in  granaries,  and  to  build 
houses  for  habitation.  When  men  emigrate  in  large 
bodies  from  one  locality  to  another,  when  they  fly  pre- 
cipitately in  a  swarm  from  a  theatre  in  which  some  one 
has  given  the  alarm  of  fire,  when  they  trade  commod- 


464  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

ities  in  a  public  market,  when  they  vote  together  for 
protection  to  industry,  or  when  they  organize  into 
an  army  to  fight  a  neighboring  community,  are  they 
not  doing  precisely  what  hive-bees  do,  and  for  the 
same  purpose  ? 

If  the  social  conduct  of  men  be  produced  by 
reason  and  that  of  bees  by  instinct,  we  will  be  forced 
to  admit  that  the  blind  instinct  of  the  bee  is  vastly 
superior,  for  social  purposes,  to  the  reason  of  man. 
But  this  notion  need  not  alarm  any  member  of  the 
human  species  for  his  dignity  of  mind  or  of  body. 
For  if  the  social  action  of  the  hymenoptera  is  more 
conducive  than  that  of  men  to  the  liberty,  the  mo- 
rality, and  the  happiness  of  all,  it  is  because  bee 
communities  are  comparatively  very  wealthy  groups, 
in  which  the  diffusion  of  political  power  and  the  dif- 
fusion of  wealth  are  in  perfect  equilibrium ;  and  be- 
cause, moreover,  the  close  contiguity  of  habitation 
renders  the  method  of  communication  perfect,  and 
makes  social  consciousness  continuous  and  complete. 

This  economic  equilibrium  in  bee  communities  has 
been  quickly  and  easily  produced  because  the  food 
capacity  and  psychic  capacity  of  the  bee  are  in  equi- 
librium in  the  individual.  Give  to  the  bee  sufficient 
food  for  present  and  future  use,  together  with  a  hab- 
itation which  will  protect  it  from  the  disasters  of  the 
weather,  and  other  destructive  causes  which  can  be 
overcome,  and  the  mental  wants  of  the  insect  are 
satisfied.  And  it  is  not  all  men  who  are  as  rational 
as  the  bee  in  this  respect.  There  are  some  human 
savages  who  are  so  improvident  as  to  be  unable  to 
lay  up  food,  and  who  are  incapable  of  perceiving 
this  relation  to  the  environment,  even  in  the  face  of 


x  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION  465 

death  by  starvation.  While  among  civilized  men, 
most  communities  have  not  so  rational  ideas  as  have 
hive-bees  as  to  hygiene  and  sanitation. 

The  ventilation  of  a  normal  hive  and  the  careful 
manner  in  which  the  hive  is  purified  of  unsanitary 
matter  produced  by  excretion,  might  be  studied  to 
some  purpose  by  men  in  even  the  most  civilized  com- 
munities. All  these  somewhat  remarkable  actions 
may  be  due  to  the  "  unreasoning  instinct "  of  this 
highly  intelligent  little  animal.  And  if  some  apiolo- 
gist  should  discover  that  bees  have  in  practice  a 
system  of  therapeutics  as  well  as  hygiene,  we  should 
be  prepared  for  the  ever  ready  theory  that  this  prac- 
tice is  instinctive  therapeutics  and  not  rational,  as  is 
the  practice  of  medicine  by  men !  Those  compara- 
tive psychologists,  —  and  their  number  is  not  small,  — 
who  still  believe  that  there  must  be  a  qualitative  dif- 
ference between  the  motives  of  man  and  all  other 
living  creatures,  calling  the  one  instinct  and  the  other 
reason,  are  probably  as  wide  of  the  mark  as  were 
their  predecessors  in  human  psychology,  who  ac- 
counted for  the  "  unchanging  substance  "  of  mind  by 
the  postulation  of  a  "  psychic  principle."  When  it 
was  learned  that  this  "  unchanging  mental  substance  " 
had  no  reality  save  that  found  in  the  process  of 
metabolism,  the  theory  of  the  "  psychic  principle " 
was  forthwith  abandoned  once  and  forever. 

If  we  compare  the  conduct  of  hive-bees  with  that 
of  civil  men,  we  must  do  it  from  one  of  two  points  of 
view.  We  must  contend  that  bees  have  no  moral 
sense  whatever,  or  we  must  admit  that  if  they  have 
moral  ideas  at  all,  they  have  them  in  high  degree  of 
quantity  and  quality.  If  we  hold  to  the  first  proposi- 


466  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

tion,  we  are  thrown  back  upon  the  assumption  that 
the  social  elements  of  morality  are  essentially  differ- 
ent in  men  from  those  of  all  other  intelligent  animals. 
These  elements,  it  will  not  be  denied,  are  the  desire 
of  the  individual  for  a  free  and  ample  existence,  the 
love  of  offspring,  and  the  conceptions  that  flow  from 
these  two  forces,  such  as  respect  for  good  citizenship 
and  repugnance  to  action  found  to  interfere  with  the 
purposes  of  life.  If  it  be  said  that  all  these  mental 
characters  are  not  moral,  but  are  born  with  the  bee,  — 
for  surely  bees  have  them  all,  —  then  our  only  con- 
clusion must  be  that  a  bee  is  born  with  a  social 
instinct  incomparably  superior  to  that  with  which  a 
man  is  born.  If  reason  be  the  determinant  of  man's 
morality,  —  if  he  is  moral  because  he  is  born  rational, 
—  then  we  can  only  conclude  that  his  reason  plus  his 
morality  produces  a  social  state  vastly  inferior  to 
that  of  bees,  which  are  assumed  to  have  neither 
morality  nor  reason  in  any  degree  at  all. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  we  admit  the  second  prop- 
osition, —  namely,  that  bees  really  have  moral  con- 
ceptions, or  a  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  —  we  are 
forced  to  the  conclusion  that  their  moral  ideas  react 
upon  their  conduct  in  a  manner  that  has  been  long 
the  dream  of  philanthropists  and  reformers  for  the 
future  of  humanity.  If  bees  have  ideas  of  morality, 
we  can  well  believe  that  to  this  force  are  attributable 
the  admirable  order  and  justice  which  have  made  their 
communities  the  exemplars  for  human  moralists  of 
all  ages.  If  we  conceive  of  a  community  of  men  in 
which  all  share  the  burden  of  life  equally,  and  equally 
divide  the  wealth  produced  by  the  common  effort; 
from  which  theft,  violence,  and  injustice  of  every 


X  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION  467 

conceivable  kind  are  absent ;  in  which  the  first  en- 
deavor of  each  is  directed  toward  the  good  of  all ;  in 
which  motherhood  is  the  most  sacred  of  ideas,  and 
the  rearing  of  young  is  attended  with  tender  and 
scientific  solicitude ;  in  which  liberty  and  equality  are 
vitally  organic;  wherein  to  be  a  man  is  universally 
accepted  evidence  of  full  duty  done  and  highest  re- 
ward earned  —  if  we  conceive  of  a  community  like 
this,  we  shall  have  the  ideal  conception  of  social 
justice. 

And  if  we  find  that  hive-bees  are  lacking  in  one  of 
these  characters,  —  if  they  slay  the  drones  and  allow 
queens,  when  there  is  need,  to  slay  one  another,  —  we 
must  remember  that  such  is  the  fact  only  because  a 
single  female  of  the  species  produces  two  thousand 
young  every  day  in  season. 

But  if  we  admit  that  bees  have  moral  ideas,  we  are 
not  therefore  required  to  conclude  that  these  ideas 
are  as  complex  as  those  of  men.  We  are,  in  fact, 
compelled  to  conclude  the  very  reverse.  Social 
morality  arises  out  of  individual  morality.  The  moral 
concepts  of  a  solitary  animal  cannot  rise  above  the 
simplicity  of  its  functional  needs.  Animals  which 
have  not  progressed  beyond  the  family  group  have 
ethical  perceptions  and  ideas  pertaining  only  to  the 
family.  Family  ethics  are  compounded  into  higher 
degrees  of  complexity,  as  families  are  merged  into 
tribes  and  tribal  relations  are  included  in  moral 
thought.  With  men  we  have  national  or  political 
moral  ideas,  and  lastly  we  have  the  ethics  of  the  genus, 
under  which  are  grouped  all  moral  ideas  with  relation 
to  man.  Thus  we  find  amity  among  animals  of  the 
same  family  and  the  same  tribe ;  and  in  men,  amity 


468  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

among  members  of  the  family,  the  tribe,  the  group, 
the  race,  the  genus.  But  if  the  moral  ideas  of  social 
man  are  more  complex  than  those  of  social  animals 
of  other  kinds,  the  fact  is  due  to  two  causes.  One  of 
these  causes  is  the  higher  character  of  man's  nervous 
apparatus,  and  the  other  is  a  jointure  of  this  com- 
plexity with  a  complex  environment.  Out  of  this 
twofold  cause  arises  the  social  state  of  men  with  all 
its  accompaniments  of  progress  —  morality  included. 
If  we  find  that  hive-bees  —  the  most  socially  developed 
of  all  animals  —  present  a  social  state  more  moral  than 
that  of  man,  it  is  only  because  that  bees  have  out- 
stripped man  in  social  development  With  them, 
individual  wants  are  in  equilibrium  with  social  needs. 
And  this  state  has  not  yet  been  reached  by  any  so- 
ciety in  human  history.  Human  social  kinetic  energy 
flows  in  the  same  direction  as  we  find  social  energy 
flowing  in  groups  other  than  human.  Discoveries  of 
new  relations  to  the  environment  have  eased  the  flow 
in  some  groups,  while  other  groups  have  progressed 
more  slowly,  or  have  fallen  out  of  existence.  But  in 
all  groups,  human  or  otherwise,  we  find  the  same 
relations  of  government  to  capital  where  government 
and  capital  coexist.  These  relations  are  found  to 
depend  upon  the  quantity  and  the  diffusion  of 
wealth.  They  are  determined  also  by  the  clarity, 
the  vividness,  and  the  complexity  of  the  social  con- 
sciousness of  the  group  ;  and  the  rapidity  of  social 
intellection  is  determined  by  the  proximity  of  the 
individuals  in  the  social  state  to  one  another,  and  by 
the  efficiency  of  their  instruments  and  methods  of 
communication. 

Among  men  we  find  some  individuals  with  moral 


X  METHODS  OF  COMMUNICATION  469 

ideas  more  complex  than  those  of  any  individual 
social  bee.  And,  again,  we  find  orders  of  social  bees 
with  moral  ideas  more  complex  than  many  individual 
men.  But  the  complexity  and  the  simplicity  in  both 
man  and  bee  are  determined  by  the  character  and 
quantity  of  wealth,  its  diffusion,  and  the  quantity 
of  social  consciousness,  together  with  its  means  of 
action.  There  can  be  no  moral  or  economic  progress 
in  the  most  socially  developed  groups  of  bees  because 
the  diffusion  of  wealth  is  perfect,  its  quantity  is  suffi- 
cient for  the  vital  and  psychic  capacity  of  the  indi- 
vidual, and  because  those  acts  of  bees  deemed  immoral 
by  human  standards  are  necessary  for  the  highest 
good  of  all,  and  hence  perfectly  moral  for  the  insect. 
To  the  bee,  the  death  of  the  individual  whose  life  is 
a  menace  to  the  life  of  all,  is  a  necessarily  moral  de- 
sideratum. And  this  is  a  law  of  human  morals  also. 


CHAPTER   XI 

SOCIAL    EQUILIBRIUM 

THE  time  has  now  come  to  lay  before  the  reader 
the  supreme  conclusion  of  our  theory.  In  doing  this 
it  is  necessary,  we  believe,  to  say  a  few  words  for  the 
benefit  of  those  who  have  not  made  a  special  study  of 
economic  science ;  to  set  forth,  in  plain  and  concrete 
terms,  the  real  meaning  of  the  law  of  capitalization 
developed  in  the  preceding  pages. 

The  law  of  capitalization  is  really  nothing  more 
than  a  statement  of  the  order  in  which  social  phe- 
nomena take  place.  It  is  not  a  force  at  all.  It  is 
only  a  statement  of  the  order  in  which  force  issues 
into  action.  We  first  define  what  we  mean  by  the 
term  "government"  ;  then  we  define  what  we  mean 
by  "  capital  " ;  and  lastly  we  observe  the  universal 
manner  in  which  these  things  mutually  conduct  them- 
selves. To  the  statement  of  this  universal  conduct, 
made  in  general  terms,  we  give  the  name  of  the 
"law"  of  the  conduct,  or  the  law  of  the  process  of 
capitalization. 

The  law,  if  it  be  a  general  one,  must  cover  all  the 
movements  of  society ;  it  must  account  for  the  decay 
of  societies  as  well  as  for  their  growth  ;  and  if  it  be  a 
true  law,  no  exception  can  be  found  to  the  general 
process  it  formulates. 

470 


CHAP,  xi  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM  471 

But  while  all  this  may  be  perfectly  rational,  it  by 
no  means  implies  that  a  mere  statement  of  the  law 
will  enable  us  to  conceive  a  completed  process  of 
social  growth.  Given  a  completed  process,  as,  for 
example,  that  of  hive-bees,  and  we  can  account  for  it 
by  the  law  of  capitalization.  In  a  similar  way  we 
can  account  for  the  equilibrium  of  a  planet's  motion 
by  using  the  law  of  gravitation  as  a  basis  of  computa- 
tion. But  it  is  clear  that  if  there  were  no  equilibrated 
planetary  motion,  no  regular  and  rhythmic  action  of 
celestial  bodies,  we  could  not  forecast  a  system  of 
motion  like  that  observed  in  the  planets  which  revolve 
around  the  sun. 

In  all  that  has  gone  before,  our  principal  aim  has 
been  to  ascertain  the  regularity  of  movement  in  the 
matter  of  wealth.  Wealth  and  its  diffusion  have 
been  the  basis  of  our  study.  But  when  we  have 
reduced  all  movements  of  wealth  to  their  highest 
terms,  we  have  only,  after  all,  ascertained  the  general 
fact  that  social  motion  issues  in  an  ever  enlarging 
diffusion  of  wealth  among  social  men. 

Our  present  position  appears  to  be  this :  We  have 
found  that  social  motion  carries  us  along  a  right  line 
in  the  direction  of  an  equilibrium  in  which  the  sum 
of  social  product  shall  be  equally  divided  among  those 
who  create  it.  For  the  sake  of  theory,  we  can  admit 
that  human  society  will  really  reach  that  state  sooner 
or  later ;  that  the  time  will  come  when  all  capital 
that  can  be  owned  by  the  public  will  be  owned  by 
the  public ;  and  that  no  producer,  employed  in  this 
general  and  public  creation  of  wealth,  will  receive 
a  pennyworth  more  for  his  labor  than  will  any  of 
his  fellow-workers,  no  matter  what  may  be  his  oc- 


4/2  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

cupation,  or  how  long  or  short  will  be  his  hours  of 
toil. 

Let  us  suppose,  as  we  have  said,  for  the  sake  of 
theory,  that  this  equilibrium  will  really  be  brought 
about.  The  question  at  once  suggests  itself :  Will 
that  equilibrium  be  stable  ?  Will  society  always 
remain  in  that  state,  ever  dividing  its  social  product 
equally  among  the  producers  ?  In  other  words,  is 
there  any  force  in  the  common  nature  of  men  which 
would  break  up  that  state,  even  if  we  grant  that  such 
a  state  could  be  once  established  ? 

If  the  disposition  of  the  matter  depended  upon  the 
selfish  desires  of  men  for  wealth,  we  could  assuredly 
answer  the  question  by  saying  that  such  a  state  of 
equality  could  never  be  disturbed.  For  the  majority 
of  men  would  never  consent  to  a  change  in  a  system 
which  secured  the  highest  possible  comforts  with  the 
least  possible  effort.  But  the  equilibrium  would  not 
depend  upon  common  ideas  of  justice  and  of  personal 
rights.  It  would  depend  upon  something  very  differ- 
ent. It  would  depend  upon  the  number  of  the  indi- 
viduals among  whom  the  social  product  would  have  to 
be  passed  about. 

We  can  imagine  an  indefinite  prolongation  of  this 
comfortable  state  of  equality  so  long  as  we  can 
imagine  that  the  earth  will  give  up  to  man  an  ever 
increasing  quantity  of  wealth.  We  can  imagine  the 
population  of  the  world  increasing  with  enormous 
strides,  and  society  redoubling  its  efforts  to  extract 
wealth  in  quantities  sufficient  to  satisfy  the  compound 
multiplications  of  numbers. 

But  this  kind  of  a  prospect  is  very  far  from  satis- 
factory. It  will  not  do  to  say  that  the  earth  is  very 


XI  SOCIAL   EQUILIBRIUM  473 

rich,  and  can  be  worked  up  to  support  inconceivable 
numbers  of  men  if  its  resources  were  but  adequately 
exploited.  This  will  not  do  at  all.  We  cannot  leave 
human  society  in  this  extraordinary  position  and  be 
certain  of  anything.  Who  knows  whether  methods 
of  agriculture  will  ever  be  improved  to  such  an  extent 
that  there  will  never  be  a  scarcity  of  food  ?  We  can 
imagine  a  very  serious  and  permanent  disturbance  of 
the  equilibrium  if  we  imagine  an  indefinite  increase 
of  population  —  accompanied  by  the  slightest  failure 
to  meet  the  new  demands.  It  is  this  apparently 
inevitable  world-crowding  that  offers  the  vulnerable 
spot  in  all  ideal  social  systems  based  upon  an  equal 
division  of  wealth.  It  will  not  do  to  postpone  the 
day  of  reckoning  by  a  vague  hope  that  invention  will 
help  out  posterity,  and  that  men  will  find  some  way 
of  overcoming  the  difficulty.  We  do  not  know  that 
they  will  find  anything  of  the  kind.  If  we  know  any- 
thing, we  know  precisely  that  they  will  not  and 
cannot  find  it.  To  dispose  of  the  question  in  such 
a  helpless  manner  as  this  is  pure  childishness,  having 
neither  reason  nor  common  sense. 

What  then  ?  the  reader  will  ask.  Grant  that  hu- 
man society  will  one  day  reach  an  equality  of  wealth 
like  that  of  hive-bees,  what  is  the  condition  of  its 
permanency  ?  How  is  the  equilibrium  to  be  main- 
tained, if  maintained  it  can  be  at  all  ? 

If  we  suppose  that  human  population  will  go  on 
indefinitely  multiplying,  crowding  the  earth  with 
billion  upon  billion  of  human  inhabitants,  as  wealth 
enlarges  and  nations  prosper,  we  must  abandon  the 
idea  that  social  equilibrium  of  a  permanent  kind  can 
be  produced.  The  equilibrium,  at  best,  would  be  tern- 


4/4  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

porary  and  precarious.  Equality  would  be  broken 
down,  and  society  would  return  to  its  former  state  of 
struggle  for  unequal  quantities  of  wealth. 

But  if  we  suppose  that  there  exists  in  society  a 
blind  force  which  is  seen  to  act  as  a  check  upon 
population,  —  a  force  ever  silently  at  work,  and  ever 
drawing  within  the  circle  of  its  power  larger  and 
larger  numbers  of  human  beings,  —  we  could  then 
see  our  way  to  an  equilibrium  of  equality  in  wealth 
stable  in  a  high  degree.  If  we  can  discover  such 
a  force  and,  furthermore,  find  out  the  law  of  its 
action,  we  shall  be  on  the  way  to  a  solution  of  the 
problem  that  has  puzzled  many  thinking  men  since 
Malthus  announced  his  theory  of  population.  We 
shall  be  enabled  to  clear  up  the  difficulties  confront- 
ing the  socialists  whenever  these  active  philosophers 
have  permitted  themselves  to  look  beyond  their  im- 
mediate desires  for  reform. 

If,  moreover,  on  finding  this  force,  we  find,  too,  that 
it  arises  directly  out  of  the  very  process  of  economic 
equilibration  itself,  we  shall  have  made  a  discovery  of 
the  utmost  importance.  Understand  well  what  we 
mean  :  The  force  which  checks  population  depends 
upon  the  diffusion  of  wealth  among  men.  If,  in  find- 
ing its  economic  equilibrium,  human  society  at  the 
same  time,  unconsciously  and  necessarily,  draws  its 
population,  up  or  down,  to  a  normal  or  mean  number 
which  will  neither  increase  nor  diminish  once  that  the 
economic  equilibrium  is  established,  we  shall  have  no 
farther  to  look  for  a  solution  of  the  problem  of 
population. 

If  such  be  the  fact,  it  would  mean  that  the  human 
population  of  the  future  will  be  controlled,  as  to  num- 


XI  SOCIAL   EQUILIBRIUM  475 

ber,  by  a  self-regulating  method  entirely  independent 
of  the  will  of  man  —  as  independent  of  that  will  as 
any  other  process  of  man's  body  or  mind,  and  no 
more  to  be  compared  with  the  method  in  practice 
among  bees  than  man's  body  itself  is  to  be  compared 
to  the  body  of  an  insect. 

What  we  hope  to  be  able  to  show  is  this  :  That 
the  number  of  population  in  any  social  group,  whether 
human  or  not,  depends  upon  the  quantity  and  the 
kind  of  wealth  produced  by  the  group ;  and  that  it 
depends,  furthermore,  upon  the  diffusion  of  wealth 
among  the  members  of  the  group,  or  upon  the  degree, 
rather,  in  which  wealth  is  used  and  the  manner  of  its 
using.  We  hope  to  show  that  as  the  quantity  and 
diffusion  of  wealth  progress,  population  increases  up 
to  a  certain  point ;  that  when  that  point  is  reached, 
wealth  acts  as  a  check  upon  population,  rapidly  stop- 
ping its  increase;  and  that  the  action  thereafter  is 
not  in  the  way  of  a  decrease,  but  in  the  way  of  a 
maintenance  of  population  at  a  mean  number,  above 
and  below  which  the  actual  number  must  rise  and 
fall  in  a  regular  rhythm  of  movement,  controlled  by 
a  law  as  definite  and  as  calculable  as  the  law  underly- 
ing the  rhythm  of  planetary  movement  in  the  solar 
system. 

The  best  commendation  we  have  to  offer  for  this  the- 
ory of  population  is  its  simplicity.  All  that  is  needed 
for  its  development  is  the  acceptance  of  the  general 
principles  of  social  life  we  have  laid  down  in  the  pre- 
ceding pages.  Of  course,  if  these  principles  be  re- 
jected, we  could  not  hope  to  convince  any  one  denying 
them  that  our  theory  of  population  is  true.  The  law 
of  capitalization,  we  take  it,  is  very  like  Darwin's  law 


476  THE  LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

of  natural  selection  —  that  is  to  say,  it  is  a  law  which 
hardly  needs  more  than  a  detailed  statement  of  it  for 
the  perception  of  its  truth.  It  is  a  process  which  is 
open  to  the  observation  of  anybody  who  cares  to  look 
at  it.  And  if  it  be  a  true  law,  one  of  its  inevitable 
corollaries  is  the  theory  of  population  which  we  will 
now  proceed  to  unfold. 

It  is  a  fact  of ,  commonplace  observation  among 
biologists  that  the  fertility  of  animal  organisms  is  de- 
pendent upon  the  weight  of  their  nervous  apparatus. 
Animals  having  large  and  weighty  nervous  systems 
will  multiply  less  rapidly  than  animals  of  the  reverse 
kind.  Offspring  from  parents  having  a  compara- 
tively small  weight  of  nerve-substance  will  be  com- 
paratively many ;  offspring  from  parents  with  a 
comparatively  large  weight  of  nerve-substance  will  be 
comparatively  few. 

We  could  suggest  numerous  examples  of  this  law 
of  animal  fertility,  but  a  few  will  suffice  to  make  it 
clear.  In  the  class  animalia,  fish  occupy  a  compara- 
tively low  place.  The  weight  of  the  nervous  appara- 
tus of  the  fish  is  comparatively  light,  and  the  offspring 
of  fish  are  notably  numerous.  The  red  herring,  if 
left  alone,  could  reproduce  itself  so  rapidly  that  its 
progeny  in  a  few  years  would  fill  the  oceans  of  the 
earth  and  cover  up  the  land  as  well.  The  sturgeon 
is  another  very  prolific  fish.  According  to  Dr. 
Buckland,  quoted  by  Professor  Lester  F.  Ward,  a 
single  sturgeon  emitted  at  one  spawning  921,600 
eggs,  every  egg  being  capable  of  growth  into  a  fully 
matured  fish.  The  same  law  will  apply  to  the  class 
insectiva,  and  we  touched  upon  this  matter  when  we 
discussed  the  method  of  propagation  in  the  bee. 


XI  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM  477 

When  we  pass  from  the  fishes  to  the  mammals,  the 
law  of  fertility  is  equally  apparent.  Rabbits,  having 
a  comparatively  light  nervous  apparatus,  breed  sev- 
eral times  per  year,  and  produce  several  young  at  a 
birth.  The  elephant,  which  has  a  nervous  apparatus 
heavier  than  that  of  any  other  mammal, — man  in- 
cluded,—  brings  forth  offspring  at  the  rate  of  one  per 
birth,  and  that  only  after  a  period  of  gestation  of  two 
years.  For  a  more  detailed  examination  of  the  law 
of  animal  fertility,  we  refer  the  reader  to  the  second 
volume  of  Herbert  Spencer's  "  Principles  of  Biology," 
a  revised  edition  of  which  has  been  recently  published. 

These  facts  will  be  seen  to  have  a  direct  bearing  on 
the  question  of  human  population.  But  there  is 
another  order  of  facts  having  a  bearing  no  less  direct ; 
an  order  of  the  highest  importance  for  us  in  our  pres- 
ent inquiry.  It  is  this  :  The  numerical  quantity  of 
offspring  depends  not  alone  upon  the  quantity  of 
nerve,  or  brain,  but  also  upon  the  quantity  of  its  use. 
For  the  sake  of  convenience  we  will  hereafter  make 
use  of  the  word  "brain  "  when  we  discuss  the  relation 
of  nervous  systems  to  the  number  of  offspring. 

Exercise  of  the  brain,  therefore,  has  as  much  to  do 
with  the  number  of  offspring  as  has  the  size  of  the 
brain  itself.  This  fact  is  only  an  example  of  the  law 
of  the  conservation  of  vital  energy.  If  any  particular 
part,  or  organ,  of  the  body  be  exercised  more  than  the 
other  parts,  or  organs,  larger  supplies  of  blood  will 
flow  to  the  organ  or  part  so  exercised.  If  the  heart 
be  exercised  out  of  proportion  to  the  other  organs, 
nutriment  will  be  taken  from  the  others  and  will  flow 
to  the  heart.  If  the  brain  be  unduly  exercised,  the 
same  process  will  take  place.  An  undue  amount  of 


478  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

blood  will  flow  to  the  brain  at  the  expense  of  the  rest 
of  the  vital  structure.  The  proficiency  of  all  the 
other  organs  will  be  reduced  in  just  the  measure  in 
which  nutriment  is  drawn  from  them  and  sent  to 
the  brain.  And  what  is  true  of  one  organ  is  true  of 
all,  including  those  used  for  purposes  of  propagation. 

For  the  present  let  us  consider  the  force  of  these 
facts  as  they  apply  to  the  human  species.  The  brain 
of  man  is  relatively  larger  than  that  of  any  other 
mammal.  The  law  of  the  conservation  of  vital 
energy  applies  to  him  as  well  as  to  all  other  living 
creatures.  Expenditure  of  vital  energy  of  any  kind, 
muscular  or  nervous,  affects  alike  all  his  organs  other 
than  those  used  in  the  expenditure.  Thus  if  the 
demands  of  the  brain  for  nutrition  be  relatively  great, 
the  assimilative,  muscular,  and  reproductive  systems 
will  be  drawn  upon  for  part  of  the  blood  which  would 
otherwise  flow  to  them.  Hence,  with  man  we  have 
two  determinants  of  fertility  —  the  size  of  the  brain, 
and  the  degree  in  which  it  is  exercised. 

In  other  species,  or  in  most  of  them,  the  determi- 
nants are  three  in  number ;  for  in  all  but  a  very  few 
races,  natural  selection  makes  use  of  fertility  itself  as 
a  means  of  survival.  In  the  struggle  for  existence 
the  more  fertile  animals  will  be  the  ones  to  survive 
and  propagate,  while  those  less  fertile  will  be  elimi- 
nated. But  the  human  species,  and  a  few  others,  are 
exempt  from  this  force.  With  men,  fertility  has  no 
longer  a  value  in  the  struggle  for  existence  ;  and  in 
the  struggle  for  wealth,  fertility  is  often,  and  for  the 
most  part,  a  serious  disadvantage.  In  this  lies  the 
key  to  the  very  law  for  which  we  are  seeking. 

A  fact  of  social  life  to  which  a  growing  importance 


xi  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM  479 

seems  to  be  attached  must  now  be  brought  into  our 
inquiry.  It  is  a  matter  of  almost  proverbial  comment 
that  cultured  persons  beget  a  comparatively  small 
number  of  offspring.  The  poorer  classes  are  notably 
prolific.  So  much  so  that  many  well-intentioned,  if 
somewhat  unobservant,  individuals  despair  for  the 
future  happiness  of  the  great  mass  of  mankind.  The 
very  classes  to  which  large  families  are  in  reality  a 
curse  are  the  very  classes  that  breed  most  freely ; 
while  the  richer  people  of  a  community,  to  whom  a 
large  family  would  be  in  no  wise  a  burden,  are  the 
very  ones  to  whom  numerous  offspring  are  denied. 

This  important  fact  will  be  explained  when  we  con- 
sider it  in  the  light  of  the  second  determinant  of  fer- 
tility mentioned  above.  The  size  of  the  human  brain 
determines  the  fertility  of  the  race  as  a  whole,  but 
we  can  dispense  with  this  factor  of  the  law  for  the 
present.  It  is  the  second  factor  which  concerns  us 
here.  For  if  we  suppose  that  two  individuals  have 
the  very  same  weight  of  brain,  and  one  of  them  uses 
his  brain  more  than  does  the  other,  one  will  be  more 
fertile  than  the  other.  This,  according  to  the  law  of 
the  conservation  of  vital  energy.  But  one  may  have 
a  larger  brain  than  the  other,  and  yet  be  the  less  fer- 
tile of  the  two,  if  the  smaller  brain  be  exercised  more 
freely.  Let  us  substitute  the  word  "  intelligence  " 
for  the  phrase  "exercise  of  the  brain,"  and  we  will 
greatly  facilitate  our  exposition. 

In  our  discussion  of  the  increment  of  capacity  we 
noted  that  the  cultured  man  could  find  a  pleasurable 
use  for  objects  of  no  value  in  use  to  the  man  who  had 
never  possessed  them.  But  to  say  this  is  only  to  say 
that  the  cultured  man  is  more  intelligent  than  his  less 


480  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

fortunate  and  poorer  fellow.  That  is  to  say,  in  the 
satisfaction  of  his  intellectual  wants,  he  puts  a  demand 
upon  his  brain  which  is  not  put  upon  the  brain  of  the 
man  whose  intellectual  wants  are  few  by  comparison. 
Wealth,  in  the  hands  of  the  cultivated  man,  stimulates 
his  brain  to  activities  altogether  absent  from  the  men- 
tal life  of  him  who,  through  lack  of  possession,  has 
very  few  intellectual  wants  which  wealth  can  satisfy. 

Now,  if  intelligence,  or  cerebral  activity,  reduces 
the  fertility  of  the  animal  organism,  we  can  very  well 
see  how  the  man  with  large  and  varied  wealth  will 
produce  fewer  offspring  than  the  man  who  has  never 
learned  the  use  of  that  wealth  which  stimulates  the 
brain  to  action.  The  energy,  which  the  rich  or  culti- 
vated man  saves  in  muscular  effort,  he  more  than 
expends  in  cerebral  effort.  And  the  stimulus  to 
mental  effort,  in  the  cultured  man,  is  greater  than 
that  to  muscular  effort  in  the  illiterate  man.  This  is 
particularly  true  of  prosperous  communities.  For  as 
a  community  grows  rich,  it  secures  its  wealth  with 
correspondingly  small  expenditure  of  muscular  energy. 

But  the  effect  of  this  fact  on  a  prosperous  com- 
munity is  profound  and  far-reaching.  As  wealth  is 
progressively  diffused,  the  stronger  will  be  the  stimuli 
to  mental  activity.  For  as  men  grow  rich  they  grow 
also  intellectual.  As  they  grow  intellectual  they 
grow  desirous  of  becoming  more  intellectual  still, 
and  they  value  intellectuality  in  others  by  standards 
correspondingly  higher. 

Thus  it  is  seen  that  intellectual  capacity,  which 
acts  as  a  check  upon  population,  becomes  the  very 
capacity  most  highly  desired  by  constantly  growing 
numbers.  The  active  cause  at  work  is  the  progres- 


XI  SOCIAL   EQUILIBRIUM  481 

sive  diffusion  of  wealth  which,  be  it  remembered,  is 
steadily  advancing  toward  a  state  in  which  all  will  be 
equally  wealthy,  and  hence  capable  of  exercising  the 
brain  in  a  very  nearly  equal  degree. 

Here,  then,  we  find  the  elements  of  the  law  we  are 
seeking.  Here  is  the  blind  force  now  at  work  check- 
ing population  in  a  very  conspicuous  way,  and  most 
conspicuously  in  those  political  groups  that  are  the 
wealthiest.  The  elements  of  the  law  are  clear.  How 
does  the  law  act  ? 

In  human  society,  as  it  is  at  present  constituted, 
the  man  selects  the  woman  for  his  mate.  Woman 
has  been  and  still  is,  though  less  so  than  ever  before, 
the  bond-servant  of  the  man.  Yet  she  has  very  much 
to  do  with  the  selection.  If  we  imagine  that  women 
were  perfectly  free  to  choose  their  mates,  entirely 
apart  from  questions  of  livelihood,  it  is  plain  that, 
all  other  facts  being  equal,  she  would  select  the  more 
intelligent  man.  The  man,  too,  would  select  the 
more  intelligent  woman.  There  need  be  no  doubt 
of  this.  Other  things  being  perfectly  equal,  —  such 
as  beauty,  purely  personal  attraction,  and  other  ele- 
ments drawing  the  affections,  —  the  intelligent  mate 
will  be  preferred  on  both  sides. 

Thus,  as  intelligence  becomes  more  generally  dif- 
fused, with  the  diffusion  of  wealth,  intelligence  itself 
becomes  highly  desirable  as  a  means  of  securing  a 
desirable  mate.  Here  is  a  force  acting  quickly  and 
surely  as  a  check  to  population.  Without  this  growth 
of  intelligence  the  effect  would  be  the  very  opposite. 
For  we  know  that  with  an  uncultured  people,  higher 
wages  produce  greater  numbers.  And  if  we  could 
imagine  a  society  in  which  wealth  and  its  diffusion 
21 


482  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

constantly  increased,  while  the  people  remained  un- 
cultivated mentally,  we  could  conceive  of  a  multipli- 
cation of  numbers  without  an  end.  But  we  can 
imagine  no  such  thing.  We  know  very  well  that  the 
possession  of  varied  wealth  is  always  accompanied  by 
an  increase  of  intellectual  activity ;  that  is  to  say, 
when  the  wealth  possessed  is  more  than  sufficient  for 
the  bare  gratification  of  physical  desires. 

From  these  considerations  it  would  appear  that  the 
exercise,  and  not  the  size  of  the  brain,  is  the  primary 
factor  in  the  checking  of  human  population.  We 
shall  now  have  to  consider  the  secondary  factor, 
and  we  hope  that  the  reader  will  try  to  follow  the 
argument  closely,  for  he  will  see,  as  it  opens  out 
before  him,  how  one  link  of  the  reasoning  hangs  on 
the  preceding  link  until  the  entire  chain  is  completed. 
We  are  now  upon  the  threshold  of  a  disclosure  of  the 
most  important  character,  and  we  cannot  be  too  care- 
ful in  our  disposition  of  the  facts  as  they  rise  in  their 
proper  sequence.  We  must  always  keep  before  us 
the  idea  of  a  community  in  which  wealth  is  progres- 
sively diffusing;  a  community  ever  advancing,  with 
accumulating  rapidity,  toward  the  state  in  which  all 
individuals  will  be  equally  rich,  or  very  nearly  so. 

The  brain  of  the  average  woman  weighs  about  five 
and  a  half  ounces  less  than  that  of  the  average  man. 
But  the  size  of  the  brain  varies  with  various  individu- 
als. In  some  women  it  is  heavier  than  in  others. 
Now,  as  wealth  is  diffused,  larger  numbers  of  large- 
brained  women,  by  the  use  of  wealth  and  the  conse- 
quent stimulation  to  mental  effort,  acquire  a  quantity 
of  knowledge  which,  previously,  was  unusual  with 
members  of  the  sex.  That  is  to  say,  larger  numbers 
of  women  become  unusually  intelligent. 


XI  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM  483 

The  newly  intelligent  women  are  selected  as  mates 
by  an  increasing  number  of  men.  These  men  are 
themselves  variable  with  respect  to  the  size  of  the 
brain.  And  as  they,  too,  participate  in  the  advantages 
of  the  newly  diffusing  wealth,  they  are  themselves 
unusually  intelligent.  There  is  thus  established  a 
reciprocal  preference  for  intelligent  persons  in  the 
selection  of  mates,  and  its  result  is  highly  interesting. 
The  process  issues  in  the  production  of  an  increas- 
ing number  of  both  sexes  having  brains  above  the 
average  in  weight.  But  there  is  another,  and  an 
important,  fact  to  be  considered.  Larger-brained 
women  would  be  selected  by  smaller-brained  men  ; 
for  men,  on  the  average,  are  more  intelligent  than 
women  —  that  is,  they  have  a  more  varied  knowledge. 
The  result  of  this  fact  is  that  the  size  of  the  brain  is 
increasing  in  both  sexes.  And  the  increase  in  size  is 
accompanied,  in  fact  it  is  produced,  by  an  increase  in 
use.  We  have  here,  therefore,  a  twofold  check  upon 
population  drawing  within  its  power  wider  and  wider 
circles  of  men  and  women  as  the  quantity  of  wealth 
multiplies  and  its  diffusion  proceeds. 

If  we  look  into  the  future,  however,  it  may  appear 
that  there  is  no  limit  to  the  extent  to  which  this  pro- 
cess can  be  carried.  If  we  could  find  no  end  to  it, 
we  might  be  driven  to  the  absurd  conclusion  that  the 
size  of  the  human  brain  could  go  on  increasing  in- 
definitely. We  might,  indeed,  be  compelled  to  admit 
the  force  of  the  somewhat  grotesque  prediction  that 
the  man  of  the  future  will  consist  of  an  enormous 
head,  filled  with  brain,  and  that  the  remainder  of 
his  body  will  be  shrivelled  up  into  rudimentary-like 
appendages. 


484  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

But  this  view  need  cause  us  no  alarm.  If  the  size 
of  the  brain  is  increasing  by  reason  of  wealth  and  its 
uses,  we  can  look  to  wealth,  and  the  laws  of  its  use, 
for  some  force  by  which  the  increase  in  the  weight 
of  the  brain  will  be  stopped.  It  is  not  difficult  to 
find  that  force.  The  process  of  increase  will  go  on, 
it  is  true,  so  long  as  the  more  intelligent  men  and 
women  select  one  another  for  mates.  But  if  we 
imagine  the  coming  of  a  time  when  intelligence  will 
be  no  longer  a  decisive  factor  in  the  selection  of 
mates,  then  we  can  see  a  quickly  established  end  to 
the  enlargement  of  the  brain.  That  time  can  come 
only  when  variation  in  intelligence  will  be  so  slight 
as  to  make  no  very  great  difference  in  the  preference 
of  one  person  to  another  in  the  matter  of  marriage. 

Intelligence  is  now  a  deciding  factor  unquestion- 
ably. When  will  it  cease  to  be  such  ?  It  will  cer- 
tainly cease  when  the  persons  to  be  selected  are  all 
equally  intelligent.  So  long  as  intelligence  is  highly 
desirable  in  a  mate,  we  may  look  for  the  intelligent 
ones  to  be  preferred.  But  as  soon  as  the  selectors 
are  left  with  little  choice  in  the  matter ;  as  soon  as 
all  of  those  to  be  selected  are  equal  in  this  highly 
desirable  quality,  there  will  be  no  choice  in  this 
respect,  and  intelligence  will  give  way  to  other  quali- 
ties such  as  beauty,  personal  attraction,  disposition, 
compatibility  of  temper,  and  other  determinants  of 
choice  never  lacking  in  the  uniting  of  human  pairs. 

But  how  can  this  state  of  things  be  brought  about  ? 
It  is  not  difficult  to  conceive  of  such  a  state  if  we 
imagine  that  the  causes  producing  variation  cease  to 
act.  These  causes  are  no  less  than  the  use  of  un- 
equal quantities  of  wealth  by  various  individuals.  In 


xi  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM 

an  earlier  chapter  we  saw  that  wealth  and  its  uses 
produced  different  degrees  of  intellectual  capacity 
among  men.  We  then  explained  that  there  was  a 
variant  from  the  formula  which  we  would  examine 
later.  We  will  redeem  this  promise  presently.  Of 
course  it  is  not  held  here  that  the  use  of  equal  quan- 
tities of  one  kind  of  wealth  will  produce  equal  capaci- 
ties of  one  kind,  or  equal  talent  for  the  same  pursuit, 
in  all  of  the  users.  Ten  individuals  may  have  equal 
opportunities  for  the  study  of  astronomy,  yet  no  two 
might  be  equally  adept  in  that  science.  But  with 
equal  opportunities  for  all  individuals  in  all  kinds  of 
pursuits,  there  can  be  no  general  inequality  of  intel- 
ligence. This  is  the  truth  as  it  is  observed  in  society 
generally.  There  is  no  striking  general  inequality 
of  intelligence  among  the  male  or  among  the  female 
members  of  cultivated  society.  In  the  matter  of 
polite  information,  capacity  for  understanding,  famil- 
iarity with  letters  and  art,  and  keen  perceptions  of 
mind  generally,  the  men  of  the  cultured  classes  are 
very  much  alike,  and  so  are  the  women. 

If,  now,  we  suppose  that  all  the  people  of  a  com- 
munity have  the  same  advantages  of  education  as 
have  our  own  cultured  classes  at  present,  it  would 
appear  that  intelligence  would  be  at  par  in  all.  In 
other  words,  there  would  be  no  disparity  of  intelli- 
gence as  there  is  at  present.  And  as  disparity  of 
intelligence  is  now  produced  by  inequality  of  wealth, 
we  can  only  conclude  that  it  would  disappear  if  equal 
opportunities  for  the  use  of  wealth  were  given  to  all 
alike.  We  need  scarcely  add  that  these  very  oppor- 
tunities would  be  open  to  all  in  a  society  where 
socializable  capital  would  be  owned  and  operated  by 


486  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

the  state,  and  where  all  the  producers  received  equal 
compensation  for  labor  performed. 

It  would  appear,  then,  that  we  are  rapidly  compre- 
hending the  conditions  of  the  method  by  which  popu- 
lation is  to  be  controlled  in  the  future.  That  method 
is  really  no  more  than  an  universal  application  of  the 
method  which  is  operating  now  among  the  wealthy 
classes.  We  have  seen  how  intelligence  checks  fer- 
tility ;  how  intelligence  multiplies  itself  by  the  recip- 
rocal selection  of  intelligent  mates ;  how  equality  of 
intelligence  limits  the  selection,  and  finally  how  in- 
telligence loses  altogether  its  decisive  value  as  a 
desirable  attraction  to  marriage.  All  this  seems  to 
be  very  clear.  But  the  crux  of  the  question  is  yet 
to  come.  What  we  desire  to  show  is  that  the  time 
must  come,  under  the  operation  of  these  forces,  when 
the  population  of  the  earth  will  have  reached  an  un- 
alterable normal  number. 

To  conceive  of  this  state  as  being  produced  and 
maintained,  we  must  conceive  that  the  number  of 
disappearing,  or  dying,  population  will  be  constantly 
replaced  by  precisely  the  same  number  of  new  indi- 
viduals. In  other  words,  the  number  of  births  must  be 
the  same  as  the  number  of  deaths.  If  the  longevity 
of  all  be  conceived  to  be  the  same,  the  number  of  dis- 
appearing individuals  must  be  compensated  by  an 
equal  number  of  new  individuals  born  into  the  world. 
We  may  state  the  matter  in  still  another  form  by 
saying  that  the  number  of  births  must  be  two  for  each 
united  pair.  Is  there  a  blind  force,  growing  out  of 
the  diffusion  of  wealth,  which  can  be  seen  to  produce 
this  remarkable  result  ?  We  say  with  confidence  that 
there  is,  and  that  it  is  found  in  the  play  of  the  two 


XI  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM  487 

counterforces  of  natural  selection  and  sexual  selec- 
tion. Let  us  develop  this  thought. 

Women  mature  earlier  than  men,  and  hence  fertility 
in  them  ceases  at  an  earlier  age  than  does  that  of 
men.  But  early  maturity  is  due  to  the  size  of  the 
brain.  As  the  brain  of  the  woman  grows  heavier  she 
matures  later.  It  is  a  law  of  animal  life  that  late  ma- 
turity is  accompanied  by  longer  periods  of  gestation. 

Let  us  recall,  now,  the  fact  that  with  expanding 
intelligence  population  is  reduced.  With  unchecked 
reciprocal  selection  for  the  sake  of  intelligence,  the 
reduction  would  go  forward  until  the  race  would  die 
out.  At  present  man  is  exempt  from  the  law  of 
survival  when  it  is  mere  fertility  that  determines 
survival.  When  the  members  of  a  race  are  not 
destroyed  in  large  quantities,  the  more  fertile  indi- 
viduals are  not  selected  by  natural  forces  and  made 
to  survive  and  propagate.  Natural  selection  does  not 
act.  But  as  soon  as  the  more  fertile  individuals  have 
an  advantage  over  the  less  fertile  ones,  natural 
selection  begins  to  act  at  once.  It  does  not  matter 
how  little  the  advantage  may  be.  If  there  is  any 
advantage,  it  cannot  escape  the  action  of  the  selective 
force. 

In  societies  of  men,  as  we  have  said,  fertility  is 
given  the  freest  of  play.  All  produce  as  many  off- 
spring as  they  can,  and  there  is  no  individual  struggle 
to  the  death.  But  in  the  circumstances  we  have 
supposed  above  —  that  is,  the  general  decrease  of 
population  —  it  is  evident  that  the  less  fertile  indi- 
viduals would  tend  to  disappear,  whereas  the  more 
fertile  ones  would  remain  to  multiply  among  them- 
selves. 


THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

It  is  not  that  the  more  fertile  ones  would  be 
consciously  selected  by  those  desiring  mates,  for 
fertility  would  have  no  value  in  sexual  selection. 
And  as  we  have  seen,  intelligence  would  have  no 
value  either.  Thus  the  majority  of  those  selected 
would  be  of  the  more  fertile  kind  simply  because  of 
the  greater  preponderance  of  their  numbers. 

But  owing  to  variation  in  the  size  of  the  brain  and 
its  use,  variation  in  fertility  would  be  ever  present. 
Some  would  produce  more  than  sufficient  to  maintain 
the  normal  number,  and  some  would  produce  less  than 
sufficient.  The  total  number  would  ever  tend  to  rise 
above  and  to  fall  below  the  line  at  which  the  race  would 
be  maintained.  If  all  lived  to  the  same,  or  nearly  the 
same  age,  the  maintenance  of  the  race  would  depend 
upon  an  average  production  of  two  per  united  pair, 
Variation  in  fertility  would  therefore  safeguard  the 
race  from  dropping  much  below  that  average  pro- 
duction. For  as  soon  as  it  would  drop  to  a  very 
appreciable  degree,  natural  selection  would  seize 
upon  the  more  fertile  individuals  who  would  soon 
bring  the  average  birth-rate  per  pair  up  to  the  re- 
quired number. 

Thus  we  see  that  natural  selection  would  prevent 
the  race  from  any  considerable  depletion  in  numbers. 
But  it  would  do  more  than  this.  It  would  set  up 
anew  a  rapid  increase  of  population  which  would 
carry  the  average  number  of  offspring  per  pair  far 
beyond  the  necessary  compensating  number.  An- 
other blind  force  would  have  to  stop  this  new  increase 
if  we  are  not  to  suppose  that  population  would  be 
indefinitely  multiplied.  The  average  number  per 
pair  might  grow  to  three,  four,  or  five.  What  is  the 


XI  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM  489 

nature  of  the  blind  force  which  would  prevent  this 
over  production  of  numbers  ? 

Clearly,  it  is  again  sexual  selection.  For  with 
increasing  numbers,  and  a  considerably  wide  variation 
in  the  size  of  the  brain,  intelligence  would  again  assert 
itself  as  a  factor  in  marriage.  From  out  of  the  whole 
number,  the  more  intelligent  persons  would  be  selected 
for  mates,  and  hence  the  less  fertile  would  once  more 
have  an  advantage.  Again  it  would  not  matter  how 
little  the  advantage  might  be.  Any  advantage  at  all 
would  be  sufficient  to  draw  the  number  of  population 
down  to  the  normal  state  and  even  beyond  it. 

We  can  set  forth  the  operation  of  the  law  by  con- 
sidering how  it  would  act  if  we  should  suppose  that 
the  normal  population  of  the  world  be  one  hundred. 
According  to  the  law,  the  actual  number  of  the  people 
would  oscillate  in  a  regular  rhythm  above  and  below 
this  mean  number.  Let  us  now  suppose  that  sexual 
selection,  in  favoring  the  more  intelligent  persons, 
had  reduced  the  average  number  of  offspring  per 
pair  to  less  than  the  required  two.  Thus,  thirty 
pairs  produce  thirty  new  individuals,  and  twenty  pairs 
produce  forty  new  individuals,  causing  the  normal  of 
one  hundred  to  be  replaced  by  only  seventy.  The  ac- 
tual population  would  then  be  below  the  mean  number. 

Of  these  seventy  individuals  a  majority,  or  forty, 
would  be  more  fertile  than  the  remaining  thirty. 
These  would  breed  together,  and  the  average  number 
of  births  per  united  pair  would  rise.  We  can  sup- 
pose that,  of  the  seventy,  twenty  pairs  will  produce 
forty  new  individuals,  and  fifteen  pairs  will  each  pro- 
duce one  individual.  The  actual  population  will  then 
have  risen  to  seventy-five.  This  process,  repeated 


490  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

again  and  again,  will  soon  bring  the  total  to  one 
hundred  and  above  it. 

The  increase  thus  set  up  must  be  checked  when, 
other  things  being  equal,  intelligence  again  becomes 
desirable  in  mating,  and  the  less  fertile  ones  are 
selected  for  propagation.  The  average  of  births  per 
pair  will  then  take  on  the  reverse  motion,  and  will 
fall  again  to  the  normal  one  hundred  and  below  it. 

This  is  the  theoretical  conception  of  the  law.  But 
if  we  look  into  the  facts  as  they  actually  exist,  at 
present,  among  the  wealthier  classes,  and  which  must 
exist  universally  when  equal  opportunities  for  educa- 
tion are  given  to  all  alike,  we  will  find  that  the  forces 
of  selection  act  so  as  to  maintain  the  equilibrium  with 
only  a  very  slight  perturbation  from  the  norm.  For 
with  intelligence  of  no  selective  value  the  less  fertile 
and  the  more  fertile  breed  together,  thus  leaving  the 
corrective  force  constantly  free  in  its  play.  If  the 
less  fertile  indiscriminately  mate  with  the  more  fer- 
tile, over  production  among  the  latter  is  limited  by 
the  former,  and  the  balance  is  maintained.  Variation 
there  would  be,  of  course,  but  it  would  be  so  slight 
as  to  be  practically  imperceptible. 

Here,  then,  we  have  that  rhythmic,  moving,  stable 
equilibrium  of  population  we  have  been  looking  for ; 
an  equilibrium  as  stable  as  the  motion  of  a  planet  in 
its  orbit,  or  as  the  pulsation  of  the  heart  or  of  the 
brain ;  and  an  equilibrium,  furthermore,  as  indepen- 
dent of  the  volition  of  man  as  are  the  regular  move- 
ments of  his  heart,  or  of  any  of  the  other  natural 
functions  of  his  body.  That  equilibrium  is  now 
rapidly  nearing  its  completion,  and  the  forces  pro- 
ducing it  are  just  as  independent  of  human  volition, 


XI  SOCIAL   EQUILIBRIUM  491 

just  as  free  from  the  grasp  of  human  control,  as  have 
been  the  forces  that  have  moulded  the  plastic  soma- 
plasm  of  life  into  the  varied  forms  of  living  creatures 
inhabiting  the  world.  Let  us  sum  up  these  social 
forces  as  we  see  them  functioning  in  human  groups, 
and  let  us  state  broadly  the  bases  of  our  conclusions. 

Under  the  stimulus  of  accumulating  wealth  popula- 
tion increases.  But  population  tends  to  decrease  as 
the  socialization  of  capital  more  widely  diffuses  the 
wealth  that  is  produced.  When  the  limit  of  socializa- 
tion shall  have  been  reached,  population  will  rest  at  a 
mean  number,  no  longer  to  shift  to  new  levels.  That 
mean  number  must  remain  fixed.  But  if  it  remains 
so  fixed,  the  force  which  controls  it  must  remain  fixed 
also.  That  force  is  no  other  than  the  mental  activity 
of  men.  This,  then,  must  vary  in  its  quantity  only 
in  the  degree  in  which  population  varies.  And  if 
this  be  true,  there  must  be  a  third  quantity  of  social 
force  which  itself  remains  fixed.  This  third  quantity 
can  be  no  other  than  the  basic  cause  underlying 
mental  activity.  We  cannot  look  for  this  cause  in 
the  quantity  of  wealth.  For  we  know  that  wealth  is 
now,  and  must  always  remain,  variable  as  to  quantity. 
What,  then,  is  this  third  and  last  force  determining 
the  mean  of  mental  activity,  which  itself  is  the 
determinant  of  population  ?  If  it  be  anything,  it 
can  only  be  the  capacity  of  men  for  the  use  of  wealth 
which  stimulates  the  brain  to  action.  How,  let  us 
ask,  can  the  use  of  wealth  maintain  the  mental  energy 
of  men  at  a  quantity  varying  but  slightly  from  an 
unaltering  norm  ? 

In  a  state  of  equality  as  to  wealth  the  very  great 
majority  of  men  would  be  engaged  in  public  produc- 


492  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

tion  ;  in  other  words,  they  would  be  employees  of  the 
state.  The  minority  would  devote  themselves  to 
labor  of  an  individual  kind ;  that  is,  their  work  would 
consist  of  services  made  especially  valuable  by  a 
special  talent  in  the  rendering  of  them.  The  stimu- 
lus to  mental  activity  in  the  majority  would  be  the 
equal  shares  of  wealth  flowing  to  them  as  compensa- 
tion for  their  work,  and  serving  the  further  purpose 
of  a  pleasure-stimulus  to  their  minds  in  hours  of 
leisure  and  recreation.  The  mental  energy  of  each 
could  not  be  greater  than  the  inherent  capacity  of 
each  for  the  use  of  wealth,  or  for  the  labor  to  be  per- 
formed. Each,  however,  would  be  moved  to  mental 
energy  as  far  as  mental  capacity  would  permit.  If, 
upon  leaving  the  public  employ,  the  individual  would 
engage  in  privately  rendered  service,  the  same  thing 
would  be  true  of  him.  The  stimulus  would  be  the 
same  in  the  one  occupation  as  in  the  other.  It  would 
move  the  individual  to  the  highest  degree  of  work,  or 
of  pleasure,  of  which  he  would  be  capable.  But,  as  we 
saw  a  few  pages  back,  there  is  very  little  variation 
in  mental  capacity  among  men  and  among  women 
when  all  are  given  the  same  free  choice  for  the 
selection  of  their  mental  pursuits,  and  are  favored 
by  a  choice  of  many  kinds  of  wealth. 

So  it  is  seen  that  in  a  rich  and  free  community, 
wherein  all  have  equal  advantages  and  equal  freedom 
of  choice,  the  sum  of  mental  energy  would  be  the 
same  when  measured  over  considerable  periods  of 
time. 

This  sum  would  vary,  of  course,  from  one  age  to 
another,  as  men  would  relax  or  redouble  their  mental 
efforts  from  one  or  another  cause.  But  the  mean  of 


XT  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM  493 

mental  energy  would  be  maintained,  as  is  the  mean 
of  precipitation  over  the  whole  surface  of  the  earth. 
The  quantity  of  fallen  rain  and  snow  varies  from  day 
to  day  and  from  month  to  month,  but  the  whole 
quantity  remains  the  same  when  measured  over  con- 
siderable periods.  And  this  quantity  remains  fixed 
because  the  force  which  causes  evaporation  —  the 
heat  of  the  sun — is  itself  unvarying. 

In  Chapter  X  we  saw  that  the  efficiency  of  instru- 
ments of  communication  determines  the  celerity  and 
the  clarity  of  social  thought.  As  these  instruments 
improve,  social  consciousness  grows  continuous  and 
complete.  Scientific  discovery,  and  its  quick  and 
general  communication,  stimulates  the  social  mind. 
But  every  increment  of  discovery  causes  a  smaller 
rather  than  a  larger  increment  of  mental  energy. 
The  brain,  like  all  other  organs,  develops  proficiency 
by  use.  The  expert  mathematician  solves  with  little 
effort  problems  solved  only  with  great  effort  by  the 
beginner. 

Periodicity  of  mental  energy,  in  an  equalized,  or 
equilibrated  community,  would  react  periodically 
upon  population.  But  if  social  consciousness  be 
conceived  to  be  continuous  and  complete,  this  rhythm 
of  rise  and  fall  can  be  conceived  to  be  perfect. 

The  reader  may  well  ask :  Is  this  to  be  the  end  of 
human  progress  ?  Are  we  to  conceive  that  all  the 
races  of  man  are  to  be  reduced  to  an  intellectual 
level  by  this  process  of  wealth-diffusion  and  socializa- 
tion ?  Is  the  Negro,  the  Papuan,  the  Mongol,  the 
Malay,  to  be  so  changed  in  his  character  that  he  will 
be  the  equal  of  the  white  man  ?  Are  the  Aryan  and 
the  Semite  to  lose  their  intellectual  superiority,  and 


494  THE  LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

is  the  child  of  the  Zulu  to  be  lifted,  after  all,  to  a 
state  of  moral  and  mental  civilization  to  which  his 
Caucasian  brother  will  be  only  an  equal  heir  ? 

If  we  answer  Yes  to  these  questions,  we  will  be 
quit  of  the  need  of  accounting  for  the  so-called 
inferior  races  in  our  theory  of  equilibration.  But  we 
cannot  make  this  answer.  Popular  opinion,  wrong 
though  it  may  be  in  many  or  most  of  its  conceptions, 
is  probably  right  in  this ;  and  popular  opinion  upon 
this  matter  seems  to  be  very  positive  in  the  negative. 
The  average  European  does  not  believe  that  the 
Papuan  or  the  Bushman  can  be  transformed  into  a 
man  intellectually  equal  to  the  best  products  of  Euro- 
pean civilization. 

We  are  aware  that  there  is  a  growing  cult  among 
some  biologists,  of  a  highly  speculative  turn  of  mind, 
which  assumes  that  all  that  is  needed  to  convert  the 
Bushman  into  a  La  Place  or  into  a  Goethe  is  a  few 
tools  and  a  somewhat  lengthy  residence  in  Paris  or 
in  Berlin.  But  this  is  a  conclusion  from  Weismann's 
theory  of  a  piece  with  some  others.  The  one  instru- 
ment essential  to  such  a  conversion  is  the  brain  of  a 
La  Place  or  of  a  Goethe ;  and  until  we  can  see  our 
way  clear  to  supplying  the  Bushman,  or  his  cousins, 
with  an  instrument  of  this  kind,  we  may  as  well 
forego  our  hope  that  a  sort  of  Weismannic  paradise 
will  be  forthwith  produced. 

If  we  admit  the  possibility  of  this  sudden  transfor- 
mation, we  shall  have  to  prove  that  there  is  no  ana- 
tomical difference  in  the  brain  of  the  various  races  of 
men.  To  assert  that  no  such  difference  exists,  and 
that  all  humans  are  intellectually  equal,  will  involve 
us  in  some  odd  conclusions.  It  is  equivalent  to  the 


xi  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM  495 

assertion  that  man  is  exempt  from  natural  law ;  that 
selection  and  survival  do  not  produce  the  human  race 
in  the  same  way  that  other  creatures  are  produced ; 
that  the  very  fact  of  being  a  man  makes  man  essen- 
tially different  from  other  races  very  nearly  like  him. 

These  assertions  are  absurd.  The  word  "man" 
is  a  fine  bugbear,  and  has  long  served  the  purpose  of 
frightening  timid  persons  who  were  not  overinformed 
in  the  truths  of  natural  history.  But  man,  after  all, 
is  only  an  idea.  We  could  use  the  word  "  dog  "  much 
in  the  same  way ;  but  when  pushed  for  a  definition, 
we  should  hesitate  whether  to  include  in  the  class  of 
that  "  noble  and  intelligent "  animal  such  creatures  as 
the  wolf,  the  jackal,  and  a  few  other  species  which 
are  not  so  intelligent  or  noble.  Yet  these  are  quite 
as  much  dog  as  any  canine  companion  of  man.  The 
comparative  anatomist  is  troubled  with  no  such  fine 
scruples.  For  him  the  word  "  dog"  has  no  false  mean- 
ing, and  for  him  the  word  "  man  "  has  no  terrors.  If  he 
uses  the  word  at  all,  he  uses  it  as  connoting  a  genus 
of  animals  with  certain  specific  anatomical  characters, 
and  that  is  all. 

Now,  the  question  of  psychological  variation  among 
races  of  men  is  not  precisely  settled,  for  the  principal 
reason  that  sufficient  data  are  lacking.  But  so  far  as 
observation  goes,  there  is  reason  for  concluding  that 
there  is  marked  deficiency  in  some  human  races  as 
compared  with  others.  The  evidence  gathered  by  the 
French  anthropologist,  Topinarcl,  and  adduced  by 
Dr.  Deniker,  in  his  "  Races  of  Man  "  (London  trans- 
lation, 1900),  would  indicate  that  the  European  brain 
is  the  heaviest  and  that  of  the  Australian  the  smallest. 
Between  these  extremes  come  the  Polynesians,  Java- 


496  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

nese,  Mongols,  Melanasians,  Negroes,  and  the  Dravid- 
ians  of  southern  India,  in  that  order. 

Intellectual  capacity  is  determined  not  only  by  the 
size  of  the  brain,  but  it  is  chiefly  determined  by  the 
number  of  convolutions,  or  by  certain  convolutions,  in 
the  gray  layer.  The  evidence  is  not  positively  con- 
clusive, but  it  is  conclusive  enough  for  all  those 
biologists  who  are  not  suffering  from  a  residue  of 
antique  notions  concerning  the  "dignity  of  Man" 
and  the  "transcendental  quality  of  Human  Reason." 
What  these  terms  mean  or  why  they  should  be 
adorned  with  capital  letters,  we  do  not  know. 
Neither  can  we  follow  the  logic  of  the  biologists 
mentioned  when,  with  these  terms  for  the  basis  of 
their  argument,  they  proceed  to  show,  at  least  to  their 
own  satisfaction,  that  "  Man,  with  his  divine  gift  of 
Reason,  his  noble  instincts  of  morality,  and  his  lofty 
intellect,"  is  moving  forward  to  some  "high  Destiny" 
— the  precise  nature  of  which  "Destiny"  is  left  open 
for  the  imagination  to  fill  in  at  its  pleasure  and 
leisure. 

When  we  look  at  a  Bushman,  or  at  a  steatopygous 
Hottentot,  our  conceptions  of  the  loftiness  of  "  Hu- 
man Reason  "  are  not  so  highly  inflamed.  At  least 
we  are  made  more  thoughtful.  And  if  we  find  that 
the  brain  of  a  Goethe  is  somewhat  different  in  size, 
and  in  certain  details  of  its  structure,  from  that  of 
Bushman  and  Hottentot,  we  may  safely  conclude  that 
the  difference  is  a  specific  one  and  is  to  be  valued 
accordingly. 

Natural  selection  produced  the  brain  of  the  negro ; 
and  natural  selection,  it  will  not  be  denied,  produced 
the  brain  of  the  so-called  Caucasian.  If  difference 


XI  SOCIAL   EQUILIBRIUM  497 

there  be,  it  was  natural  selection  that  produced  it ; 
and  if  the  brain  of  the  negro  is  to  be  worked  up  into 
a  cerebral  structure  like  that  of  the  Caucasian,  it 
must  be  natural  selection  that  shall  cause  the  change. 
What  ground  is  there  for  believing  that  any  process 
of  this  kind  can  ever  take  place  ?  We  are  convinced 
that  there  is  none  whatever. 

The  relation  of  structure  to  function  is  general 
throughout  organic  life.  We  touched  upon  this  sub- 
ject in  Chapter  VI  when  we  discussed  the  compara- 
tive complexity  of  individual  organisms  and  of  social 
groups.  A  simply  constructed  organ  can  have  only  a 
simple  function.  The  structure  of  the  heart,  for 
example,  is  simple  when  we  compare  it  with  that  of 
the  eye,  and  the  function  of  the  heart  is  correspond- 
ingly easy  to  understand.  The  heart  is  a  pump, 
built  upon  a  principle  of  hydraulics  by  no  means 
complex  when  compared  with  the  intricate  principles 
of  optics  explaining  the  action  of  the  eye.  The 
same  logic  holds  true  of  the  brain. 

It  should  be  remembered,  however,  that  of  two 
brains  of  equal  complexity,  one  will  function  differ- 
ently from  the  other  if  it  be  taught  the  use  of  different 
tools.  And  if  one  brain  be  taught  the  use  of  many 
tools,  and  the  other  of  only  a  few,  the  one  brain 
will  function  more  adequately  and  more  intricately 
than  the  other.  Here  we  can  plainly  see  the  depen- 
dence of  the  quantity  of  brain  function  upon  the 
quantity  of  wealth  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  man. 

But  when  we  find  that  equal  opportunities  in  the 
way  of  wealth  produce  unequal  results  in  the  intelli- 
gence of  two  different  races  of  men,  we  are  led  to  the 
conclusion  that  this  fact  must  be  due  to  some  inher- 


498  THE  LEVEL  OF   SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

ent  variation,  one  from  the  other,  in  the  cerebral 
apparatus  of  the  races  concerned. 

Let  us  give  a  concrete  example  of  this  somewhat 
abstract  statement.  In  the  United  States  of  Amer- 
ica the  negro  race  is  very  backward  in  developing 
individuals  of  high  mental  power.  This  is  a  fact  of 
such  commonplace  note  that  when  a  negro  exhibits 
the  intelligence  of  even  the  ordinary  cultured  white 
man,  some  considerable  surprise  is  manifested.  Of 
the  many,  many  millions  of  negroes  who  have  lived 
and  died  in  the  United  States,  the  number  of  those 
who  have  risen  to  even  mentionable  fame  can  be 
counted  upon  five  fingers  or  less.  And  all  these  have 
been  at  least  half  white.  Of  pure  negroes  there  is 
not  one  who  is  noteworthy. 

On  the  contrary,  there  are  thousands  of  whites, 
born  and  reared  to  youth  in  circumstances  quite  as 
poor  as  those  of  the  majority  of  negroes,  who  have 
yet  risen  to  foremost  places  as  men  of  intellect. 
And  millions  of  other  whites  —  born  and  reared  in 
similar  poverty,  with  no  better  advantages  than  most 
negroes  —  have  yet  developed  intellectual  capacity 
of  a  kind  that  is  never  developed  by  a  pure  negro. 
The  poor  white  man  — whose  father  cannot  read  — 
wins  superior  intelligence  by  the  use  of  simple  things 
which,  in  the  hands  of  the  black  man,  lead  to  com- 
paratively no  results  at  all.  This  is  a  matter  of  fact. 

The  social  inequality  of  the  negro  has  nothing  to 
do  with  the  matter.  The  negro  has  a  society  of  his 
own.  The  wealth  of  the  community  is  open  to  him 
as  it  is  to  the  white.  He  can  use  it  for  his  own 
improvement  if  he  have  the  capacity  to  do  so.  He 
had  the  use  of  much  of  it  while  he  was  a  slave.  He 


XI  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM  499 

has  had  free  access  to  it  for  nearly  half  a  century. 
He  can  buy  books  for  his  wealth,  or  he  can  save  it, 
instead  of  squandering  it  like  a  savage.  And  by  sav- 
ing it,  or  by  using  it  as  the  poor  white  man  uses  his, 
he  could  develop  his  intellect  as  the  poor  white  man 
develops  his  own.  Why  has  he  not  done  so  ? 

It  will  not  do  to  say  that  the  white  man  has  had 
the  advantage  of  a  long  line  of  ancestors  who  have 
transmitted  to  their  offspring  a  brain  of  increasing 
proficiency.  This  will  not  do  at  all,  for  it  is  only  a 
surrender  of  the  point  contended  for.  The  assump- 
tion is  that  the  negro  and  the  white  man  have  brains 
precisely  alike,  and  that  the  difference  between  their 
mental  capacities  is  due  to  the  circumstances  of  their 
wealth. 

If  this  be  the  truth  why  is  it  that  wealth  which  is, 
at  best,  only  a  slight  stimulus  to  the  mind  of  the 
one,  becomes  a  powerful  stimulus  to  the  mind  of 
the  other,  when  applied  in  circumstances  precisely 
the  same  ? 

There  can  be  only  one  conclusion.  It  is  the 
conclusion  for  which  we  have  been  contending;  and 
we  may  state  it  by  saying  that  natural  selection  has 
developed  an  important  difference  between  the  brain 
of  Caucasian  and  African,  and  that  in  that  variation 
of  organic  structure  lies  the  key  to  the  intellectual 
backwardness  of  the  negro  race. 

Yet  it  may  be  argued  by  some  that,  even  if  we 
grant  this  structural  deficiency,  the  negro  can  still 
be  brought  to  a  level  with  the  white  man  by  means 
of  a  gradual  development  through  successive  genera- 
tions. Nothing  could  be  farther  from  the  truth.  A 
development  of  this  kind  would  mean  very  much 


5OO  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

more  than  may  be  supposed.  To  produce  it,  the  en- 
tire natural  history  of  the  negro  race  would  have  to 
be  developed  over  again  in  an  environment  in  all 
respects  the  same  as  that  which  has  developed  the 
races  of  men  we  call  Caucasian.  This,  even  if  we 
grant  that  the  two  races  have  sprung  from  the  same 
parent  stock  of  pithecoids. 

But  is  not  this  an  impossible  conception  ?  The 
history  of  the  racial  environment  of  the  negro  is 
written  upon  his  brain,  upon  his  hair,  upon  his  skin, 
and  upon  his  bones  ;  and  by  no  lapse  of  time,  or  any 
possible  change  of  environment,  can  that  history  be 
altered  so  as  to  produce  a  creature  like  the  Aryan  or 
the  Semite.  The  negro  was  produced  by  a  succes- 
sion of  causes  and  effects  working  through  long  ages, 
with  infinite  complexity  of  relation,  in  a  flowing  en- 
vironment long  since  and  irrevocably  vanished.  The 
same  is  true  of  the  Caucasian.  The  two  races  occupy 
the  extreme  ends  of  two  diverging  lines  of  growth  ; 
and  until  man,  by  artificial  selection,  can  produce  a 
lion  by  breeding  cats  together,  we  may  as  well  aban- 
don hope  that  the  brain  of  a  Goethe  can  be  produced 
from  a  stock  like  the  Zulu  or  the  Hottentot. 

Our  conclusion,  then,  rests  upon  the  sound  and 
safe  theory  that  complexity  of  convolution  determines 
inherent  capacity  for  thought.  We  have  shown,  fur- 
thermore, that  to  say  that  mere  wealth  can  convert 
the  Zulu  brain  into  a  structure  like  that  of  the  Cau- 
casian, is  a  pure  assumption  unwarranted  by  observ- 
able facts,  and  disproved  by  known  ones.  Moreover, 
we  have  shown  the  unassailable  warrant  we  have  for 
rejecting  the  view  that  a  few  generations  of  trans- 
mission can  obliterate  a  divergence  caused  by  ages  of 


xi  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM  501 

development.  But  we  are  here  especially  concerned 
with  this  question.  For  if  it  be  true  that  the  negro 
and  other  species  of  inferior  men  cannot  use  the 
wealth  of  the  Caucasian  with  Caucasian  intelligence, 
a  very  serious  objection  to  our  law  of  social  growth 
might  appear  as  a  result.  If  equal  stimuli  of  wealth 
produce  unequal  mental  energy  in  the  Caucasian  and 
in  the  others,  the  inferior  races  would  be  exempt  from 
the  action  of  the  mental  check  to  population,  and 
would  soon  outstrip  the  superior  races  in  number. 
The  superior  races  would  soon  be  compelled  to  elimi- 
nate the  inferior  by  artificial  force,  or  face,  as  an  alter- 
native, the  danger  of  being  eliminated  themselves. 
Are  there  no  facts  to  support  a  third  hypothesis  ? 

We  believe  that  this  question  can  be  answered  in 
the  affirmative,  and  that  the  facts  are  to  be  found  in 
that  very  inferiority  of  brain  capacity  which  appears 
at  first  sight  to  be  the  heart  of  the  difficulty.  The  basis 
of  our  entire  argument  from  the  beginning  has  been 
that  man  is  no  different  from  other  animals  in  the 
motive  functions  and  forces  of  his  life.  We  have 
founded  our  theory  of  population  upon  the  observed 
facts  of  animal  life  in  general  and  not  upon  facts 
observed  in  man  alone.  This  was  of  course  necessary 
from  the  premises  we  laid  down  in  Chapter  II. 

If,  now,  human  fertility  be  determined,  primarily, 
by  the  exercise  of  the  brain,  and  secondarily  by  its 
size,  the  same  law  must  be  found  in  animals  other 
than  man.  For  proof  of  this  we  need  go  no  farther, 
if  necessary,  than  the  phenomena  of  fertility  as  pre- 
sented by  wild  animals  in  captivity.  These  rarely 
produce  young ;  so  rarely  that  a  birth  is  always  the 
occasion  of  unusual  remark. 


502  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

Wild  animals  in  zoological  collections  are  cared  for 
with  every  solicitude.  No  energy  whatever  is  ex- 
pended by  them  in  securing  food.  The  quantity  and 
quality  of  their  nutriment  are  in  all  respects  ample 
for  the  needs  of  propagation.  Why,  then,  do  they 
not  propagate  ? 

The  question  is  answered  at  once  if  we  consider  the 
quantity  of  mental  energy  expended  by  them.  Carniv- 
orous animals  in  captivity  are  proverbially  restless. 
And  this  restlessness  is  due  to  no  other  cause  than 
that  found  in  the  extreme  difference  of  their  new  en- 
vironment from  the  old.  The  muscular  activity  exer- 
cised by  them  when  feral  is  more  than  compensated  by 
their  cerebral  activity  in  the  circumstances  of  their 
new  life.  We  could  conceive  of  a  race  of  domesti- 
cated lions  or  eagles,  if  men  could  capture  a  sufficient 
number  of  either  species  to  produce  sufficient  young  to 
breed  together  under  domestication.  But  men  have  not 
tried  to  accomplish  this  result,  either  because  they 
could  never  capture  lions  or  eagles  in  sufficient  num- 
bers, or  because  the  motive  to  do  so  has  been  wanting. 

In  applying  these  facts  to  the  savage  races  of  men, 
we  will  discuss  the  American  negro  as  an  example. 
In  the  United  States  the  negro  population  has  in- 
creased out  of  proportion  to  the  white  population. 
For  although  the  number  of  negroes  has  not  been 
enlarged  by  immigration,  the  number  has  doubled  in 
the  forty  years  since  the  emancipation,  whereas  the 
number  of  whites,  with  the  help  of  immigration,  has 
not  increased  by  a  very  much  greater  per  cent.  If, 
however,  we  account  for  part  of  the  increase  of  the 
negro  population  by  miscegenation,  the  disparity  will 
be  reduced,  as  all  persons  of  negro  descent  are 


XI  SOCIAL   EQUILIBRIUM  503 

counted  as  negroes.  But  this  reduction  will  not  be 
very  great. 

These  facts  assume  grave  importance  when  it  is 
pointed  out  that  all  but  an  insignificant  part  of  the 
negro  population  has  been  confined  to  the  old  slave 
states  south  of  the  historic  line  between  Maryland 
and  Pennsylvania.  That  part  of  the  negro  population 
north  of  the  line  has  not  increased  proportionally. 
Comparatively  few  negroes  have  removed  to  the 
North  during  the  past  forty  years,  and  such  as  have 
removed  have  not  maintained  the  ratio  of  increase. 
On  the  contrary,  that  ratio  has  steadily  declined. 
Why? 

When  the  negro  of  the  South  removes  to  the  North, 
he  must  do  so  at  the  expense  of  a  change  in  his  en- 
vironment which  taxes  his  mental  energies  to  a  high 
degree.  The  principal  occupation  which  is  open  to 
him  in  the  South  is  closed  to  him  in  the  North. 
Northern  agriculturists  do  not  employ  negro  labor. 
The  negro  is  hence  compelled  to  live  in  cities,  and  to 
adopt  occupations  which  require  mental  exertion  of 
a  more  active  kind  than  that  used  in  the  agricultural 
fields  of  his  former  habitat.  The  negro  of  the  North 
is  a  more  capable  man  in  every  respect  than  his 
fellow  below  the  old  slave  boundary  line.  He  is  more 
moral,  more  aesthetic,  and  more  intelligent.  But  he  is 
less  fertile.  The  character  of  his  environment  causes 
an  increased  activity  of  brain.  The  more  prosperous 
and  progressive  he  becomes,  the  smaller  is  the  num- 
ber of  his  offspring.  So  that  we  see  that  in  the 
North,  where  the  negro  is  a  comparatively  capable 
and  well-educated  citizen,  the  birth-rate  of  the  race  con- 
stantly diminishes.  If  it  has  increased  in  the  South, 


504  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

it  is  only  because  that  there  the  negro  has  remained 
in  nearly  the  same  environment  to  which  he  was  first 
brought  as  a  slave  who  could  perform  the  tasks  of 
slavery  and  multiply  his  number  at  the  same  time. 

If  wealth  is  to  increase  in  quantity  and  diffusion  in 
the  southern  states,  the  negro  must  share  in  the  pro- 
cess, as  he  has  shared  in  it  up  to  the  present  time. 
It  is  only  in  recent  years  that  the  industries  of  the 
South  have  begun  to  change  their  character.  Year 
by  year  the  quantity  of  manufacturing  capital  there 
has  grown ;  and  it  is  growing  more  rapidly  now  than 
ever  before.  The  effects  of  this  new  wealth  upon 
the  southern  negro  have  been  very  perceptible. 
Books  are  found  in  the  cabin  of  the  former  slave,  and 
they  are  read  by  him  and  his  children  in  ever  increas- 
ing numbers.  His  inherent  capacity  for  the  use  of 
wealth  which  stimulates  cerebration  may  not  be,  and 
probably  is  not,  as  large  as  that  of  the  white  man. 
But  if  this  be  the  fact,  it  is  none  the  less  true  that 
use  of  the  brain  has  the  same  effect  upon  the  negro 
as  it  has  upon  the  white  man,  the  elephant,  or  the 
lion.  If  the  labor  of  the  South  is  to  be  done  by  the 
negro,  and  if  that  labor  is  to  be  largely  of  a  manu- 
facturing kind,  black  agricultural  labor  will  flow  into 
factories.  It  is  flowing  in  that  direction  now.  The 
repugnance  of  the  black  man  to  industrial  effort  is 
overcome,  as  with  the  white  man,  by  the  higher  wage. 
But  this  higher  wage  is  bought  at  a  price  involving 
greater  mental  exertion.  Out  of  the  greater  wealth 
flows  larger  desire  for  knowledge,  and  this  twofold 
energy  is  expended  at  the  expense  of  propagation.1 

JThe  United  States  census  for  1900  shows  a  remarkable  falling  off  in 
the  increase  of  the  negro  population  of  the  cities  in  the  border  states 


XI  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM  505 

Where  must  this  process  stop  with  the  negro  ? 
Other  things  being  equal,  precisely  where  it  must 
stop  with  the  white  man. 

Bat  other  things  are  not  equal,  and  never  can  be. 
For  the  environment  of  the  superior  races  must  be 
imposed  upon  the  inferior  ones.  The  Caucasian 
brain  has  been  developed  by  natural  selection  acting 
through  ages  and  by  instruments  long  since  passed 
away.  These  races  are  really  diverse,  —  not  so  diverse 
as  man  and  anthropoid,  —  but  still  diverse  in  a  measur- 
able degree.  Centuries  of  contact  with  European 
civilization  in  America  has  not  produced  a  single 
negro  with  a  brain  as  capable  as  that  of  the  white 
man  who  is  below  the  average  of  his  race.  The 
negro  has  produced  no  civilization  himself,  nor 
can  he  adapt  himself  fully  to  the  civilization  of 
other  races.  He  does  not  understand  the  wealth 
which  the  white  man  creates  and  uses.  Mere  exist- 
ence in  the  midst  of  that  wealth  cannot  produce  a 
change  in  his  brain  equal  to  that  produced  in  the 
brain  of  the  Caucasian  by  a  process  which  began 
ages  ago,  the  conditions  of  which  have  long  since 
vanished,  never  to  return.  If  we  suppose  that  this 
change  could  really  be  wrought  by  mere  association 

—  in  spite  of  the  higher  birth-rate.  The  educated  negroes  of  these 
cities  are  emigrating  in  large  numbers  to  the  cities  of  the  North,  where 
the  demand  for  their  labor  is  more  brisk  and  more  remunerative.  The 
increase  in  the  negro  population  of  the  northern  cities  is  hence  out  of 
proportion  to  the  birth-rate  there.  On  the  other  hand,  the  increase  of 
the  white  population  in  the  southern  states  is  out  of  proportion  to 
the  birth-rate  among  the  southern  whites.  These  facts  show  that  the 
border  negroes  are  flowing  northward,  and  the  northern  whites  are 
flowing  southward  —  an  ideal  state  of  things  for  the  "solution"  of 
the  vexed  "  race  question  "  in  the  United  States. 


506  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

with  superior  men  in  new  environments,  we  should 
be  compelled  to  suppose  that  the  same  forces  would 
serve  to  develop  the  brain  of  the  anthropoid  or  the 
dog. 

But  the  dog  has  an  advantage  which  the  inferior 
man  has  not.  He  is  not  compelled  to  exercise  his 
brain  by  using  the  environment  of  man  in  order  that 
he  may  survive.  And  not  being  so  compelled,  he  is 
enabled  to  propagate.  But  if  we  suppose  that  the 
dog,  the  elephant,  the  horse,  or  any  other  domestic 
animal  were  forced  constantly  to  exercise  his  mind  to 
secure  the  food  which  sustains  him,  we  can  easily 
conceive  that  his  fertility  would  decline  and  that  the 
race  would  be  eliminated.  This  is  the  force  which 
must  act  upon  the  negro  and  with  continuously  in- 
creasing power. 

No  other  conclusion  is  to  be  drawn  from  the  prem- 
ises. For  it  should  be  clear  that  the  least  adaptable  of 
the  race  would  be  the  first  to  disappear.  If  the  en- 
vironment would  remain  constant,  the  more  adaptable 
ones  would  survive  and  multiply.  But  the  environ- 
ment would  not  remain  constant.  It  would  cease- 
lessly change  to  higher  degrees  of  complexity.  To 
these  changes  the  more  intellectual  white  man  would 
be  rapidly  adjusted.  But  as  soon  as  the  complexity 
of  environment  would  pass  the  limits  of  the  negro's 
capacity  for  adaptation,  the  negro  would  rapidly 
disappear. 

What  we  have  said  of  the  negro  in  America  will 
apply  to  all  inferior  races  when  we  conceive  of  the 
new  environment  as  being  forced  upon  them  by  con- 
quest, or  by  those  circumstances  of  industry  which 
shall  compel  the  more  general  use  of  the  implements 


XI  SOCIAL   EQUILIBRIUM  507 

and  economic  methods  of  civilization  in  those  locali- 
ties now  occupied  by  inferior  men. 

We  do  not  disguise  from  ourselves  the  tremendous 
character  of  the  conclusion ;  but  we  are  forced  into 
it  by  the  logic  of  our  theory.  If  we  have  made  an 
accurate  analysis  of  social  forces,  the  conclusion  is 
clear  and  inevitable.  That  it  is  borne  out  by  observed 
facts,  an  examination  of  the  effects  of  civilization  upon 
inferior  races  will  undoubtedly  show. 

In  New  Zealand,  where  the  aboriginal  Maoris  have 
exceptional  advantages  of  equality  with  the  Euro- 
peans, the  number  of  this  race  has  steadily  declined. 
That  decline  has  been  so  rapid  as  to  cause  unusual 
comment.  Of  the  inferior  races,  the  Maoris  of  New 
Zealand  are  notably  conspicuous  for  their  adaptability 
to  the  civilized  state.  They  quickly  assume  the 
manners  and  the  language  of  Europeans ;  they  min- 
gle with  the  British  freely,  their  children  learn  rapidly, 
and  they  are  remarkable  for  the  intelligence  and  the 
entirely  "civilized"  character  they  acquire  by  free 
contact  with  the  Anglo-Saxons  and  the  Celts.  Yet 
their  number  is  so  rapidly  diminishing,  in  spite  of  all 
these  advantages,  that  their  total  elimination  is  but  a 
question  of  a  short  time. 

The  causes  obliterating  large  numbers  of  other 
such  races  are  not  present  with  the  Maoris.  They 
are  industrious,  cleanly,  and  healthy.  They  are 
given  a  perfectly  even  share  in  the  representative 
government,  and  take  a  keen  interest  in  public 
affairs.  Here  we  have  ideal  conditions  under  which 
to  test  our  theory  of  population. 

In  New  Zealand,  as  we  saw  in  a  preceding  chapter, 
the  diffusion  of  wealth  has  progressed  farther  than  in 


508  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

any  other  civilized  group.  There,  too,  government 
and  capital  are  united  over  the  largest  areas,  and  in 
actual  contact.  And  when  we  place  these  facts  against 
the  rapidly  growing  elimination  of  the  smaller-brained, 
less  intellectually  capable  natives,  we  cannot  fail  to 
see  how  perfectly  the  facts  and  the  theory  coincide. 
If  ever  an  inferior  race  was  placed  under  the  ideal 
conditions  of  rising  to  equality  with  the  Caucasian, 
the  Maoris  of  New  Zealand  are  that  very  race.  And 
yet  we  see  how  they  have  failed.  Why  ?  Because  the 
very  advantages  placed  in  their  hands  operate  so  as  to 
stimulate  them  to  mental  energy  out  of  proportion  to 
the  limitations  of  their  vitality. 

Possessed  of  a  brain  developed  by  a  simple  environ- 
ment, and  by  a  simple  form  of  wealth,  they  cannot 
adapt  themselves  to  an  environment  of  another  order 
without  expending  an  undue  proportion  of  mental 
force  ;  and  in  doing  this  they  necessarily  limit  the 
nervous  force  expended  in  the  process  of  propagation. 
The  Celt  and  the  Teuton  pay  no  such  penalty  because 
the  wealth  they  use  is  their  own,  created  by  their 
own  mental  energy,  and  hence  productive  of  no  more 
exacting  mental  demand  than  the  European  brain  is 
capable  of  meeting. 

A  somewhat  similar,  though  not  so  thoroughly 
nice,  illustration  is  found  in  the  Hawaiians.  These 
people  are  not  so  industrious  as  the  Maoris,  but  they 
are  very  like  them  in  the  way  of  mental  capacity. 
They,  too,  are  rapidly  succumbing  to  their  contact 
with  European  and  American  civilization.  The  rapid 
decrease  of  their  numbers  is  not  accounted  for  by  the 
presence  of  disease,  native  and  imported. 

The  conditions  in  America  are,  as  we  have  seen, 


XI  SOCIAL   EQUILIBRIUM  509 

favorable  to  our  view.  The  prevalent  notion  that 
the  North  American  Indian  is  dying  out  is  a  per- 
fectly false  one.  Since  1860  the  number  of  Indians 
has  considerably  increased.  But  the  Indian  does  not 
use  the  environment  of  the  white  man.  He  does  not 
become  "  civilized."  He  lives  very  much  as  his 
ancestors  have  lived.  What  would  happen  were  he 
forced  to  earn  his  livelihood  as  is  the  negro  of  the 
North,  we  cannot  positively  say.  But  we  should 
hardly  look  for  a  development  in  the  American  Indian 
that  has  never  been  found  in  other  savage  races 
upon  which  the  environment  of  civilization  has  been 
forced. 

When  we  consider  a  people  like  the  Chinese,  or 
Japanese,  we  are  disposed  to  modify  our  conceptions, 
in  so  far  as  these  races  are  themselves  capable  of 
producing  a  civilization  of  their  own.  But  Mongol 
civilization  is  not  to  be  compared  with  European 
civilization.  China  must  either  go  farther  than  it 
has  yet  gone,  or  inevitably  come  into  conflict  with 
the  West.  She  cannot  hope  to  live  on  with  priceless 
natural  wealth  lying  untouched  in  her  soil.  She 
must  either  develop  it  herself,  or  stand  apart  while 
others,  more  capable,  do  the  work. 

China  cannot  escape  the  tide  of  progress  flowing 
to  the  Orient.  Peaceably  or  forcibly  she  must  sub- 
mit to  western  domination.  That  can  only  mean  the 
transformation  of  China's  wealth  into  a  wealth  like 
that  of  Europe  and  America.  Her  industrial  and 
agricultural  resources  must  be  worked  up  by  modern 
instead  of  mediaeval  methods.  The  desires  of  western 
men  for  larger  economic  liberties  demand  it.  The 
growth  of  invention  and  industry  demand  it.  Political 


510  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

expansion,  growing  out  of  these  causes,  demands  it 
imperatively.  And  it  is  demanded  by  the 'moral  force 
of  western  peoples,  whose  comforts  are  interfered 
with  by  Chinese  obstinacy  and  ignorance. 

It  is  an  odd  perversion  of  moral  ideas  to  hold  that 
the  Chinese  have  a  right  to  live  as  they  please  just 
because  they  were  first  on  the  ground.  This  view 
would  stop  human  progress  at  its  very  fountain  and 
source.  If  the  Chinese  have  a  right  to  live  unmo- 
lested on  soil  containing  useful  wealth  which  they 
refuse  to  develop,  so  has  a  tribe  of  savages  in  the 
heart  of  Africa.  If  the  rights  of  American  Indians 
in  this  respect  had  been  in  force,  where  had  been  the 
civilization  of  the  Americans  of  to-day  ?  China  can 
very  readily  assert  and  enforce  her  rights  to  be  let 
alone  if  she  can  devise  instruments  of  civilization 
such  as  Europe  has  invented.  Let  her  mine  her 
mineral  wealth,  improve  her  agriculture,  and  take  her 
place  in  the  family  of  nations,  and  nobody  will  disturb 
her.  But  if  she  cannot  do  this,  she  must  allow  the 
other  members  of  the  family  to  help  her  peaceably 
if  may  be,  forcibly  if  must  be.  And  as  soon  as 
she  does  this  the  Chinese  brain  will  be  placed  in 
the  scale  and  measured  against  the  brain  of  the 
Caucasian. 

Such  are  the  general  conclusions  to  which  we  come 
in  our  universal  application  of  our  law  of  population. 
From  these  conclusions  it  would  appear  that  the  so- 
called  Caucasian  races  —  the  so-called  Aryan  and 
Semite  —  are  to  make  up  the  social  compound  of  the 
future.  There  need  be  no  ethnical  mixture  of  these 
two  divisions  of  man  ;  for  Aryan  and  Semite  live 
together  now,  socially,  on  terms  of  perfect  economic 


xi  SOCIAL   EQUILIBRIUM  51 1 

and  intellectual  equality.  We  can  imagine  that 
other  races  of  men  will  survive.  But  they  must  be 
separated  from  the  Caucasian  by  gaps  like  those  which 
at  present  separate  the  Eskimos,  and  the  inhabitants 
of  certain  parts  of  the  tropics,  from  civilization. 
These  may  live  on  as  long  as  the  superior  races  do 
not  desire  to  inhabit  the  Arctic  or  the  torrid  zone. 
That  probability  is  remote,  but  should  it  ever  eventu- 
ate, the  last  remnant  of  savagery  in  man  must  dis- 
appear. 

In  our  discussion  thus  far  we  have  anticipated  a 
conclusion  which  properly  belongs  here.  We  assumed 
an  equilibrium  in  population  as  being  conceivable  fol- 
lowing upon  the  socialization  of  capital.  But  the 
reader  probably  observed  that,  in  accounting  for  the 
theoretical  equilibrium,  we  admitted  into  our  calculation 
a  perturbing  force.  This  was  the  variable  capacity 
of  the  individual  due  to  the  varying  size  of  the  brain. 
For  it  might  be  urged  that  if  the  brain  varied  in  size, 
the  capacities  of  the  small-brained  persons  would  not 
be  able  to  meet  the  requirements  of  the  convolving 
environment;  hence,  like  the  inferior  races,  they 
would  be  eliminated,  and  hence  the  brain  of  all  would 
have  to  be  perfectly  equal  if  the  norm  of  population 
would  remain  constant. 

The  force  of  this  objection  would  be  unassailable 
if  we  could  conceive  that  the  small-brained  individuals 
would  propagate  only  among  themselves,  as  we  have 
assumed  would  be  the  fact  with  the  inferior  races. 
But  the  very  opposite  of  this  is  the  truth.  The 
Caucasian  races  propagate  together  and  very  seldom 
with  any  other  race.  We  saw  that  sexual  selection 
would  cause  the  brain  of  woman  to  increase  in  size 


512  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

because  the  less  intelligent  women  would  be  moved 
to  select  the  more  intelligent  men.  In  this  way  the 
smaller-brained  women  would  disappear.  This  pro- 
cess is  actually  taking  place  now,  if  we  are  to  trust 
to  deductive  reasoning.  But  the  elimination  must 
go  on  until  the  brain  and  stature  of  the  two  sexes  are 
of  the  same  size,  or  very  nearly  so,  the  brain  of  the 
man  being  slightly  larger  than  it  is  now.  The  varia- 
tion in  the  intellectual  capacity  of  the  type  would 
then  be  so  slight  as  to  make  intelligence  no  longer  a 
sexiial  selective  force.  But  just  so  soon  as  this  takes 
place,  there  can  be  no  longer  any  decrease  or  increase 
in  the  size  of  the  typal  brain,  because  such  variations 
in  intellectual  capacity  as  would  then  exist  would  not 
be  seized  upon.  In  other  words,  the  intellectual 
capacity  of  all  would  be  equal  so  far  as  sexual  selec- 
tion would  be  concerned.  But  this  could  only  mean 
that  the  widest  departure  from  the  average  would  be 
an  almost  immeasurable  quantity.  The  result  would 
be  a  race  of  which  the  individuals  would  be  intellectu- 
ally alike  and  hence  equally  fertile. 

We  should  not  forget  that  the  term  "equality  of 
intellect"  as  here  used  means  equality  of  quantity  and 
not  of  kind.  We  do  not  say  that  every  individual 
would  be  the  equal  of  every  other  in  all  kinds  of  in- 
tellectual capacity.  It  should  be  clear  that,  owing  to 
the  variety  of  wealth  and  its  uses,  some  intellects  are 
more  proficient  in  some  way  or  ways  than  others. 
Thus  the  man  who  uses  wealth  which  develops 
mathematical  ability,  will  be  a  more  proficient  mathe- 
matician than  he  who  uses  another  kind  which  de- 
velops musical  ability. 

We  cannot  compare  different  orders  of  things  in 


XI  SOCIAL   EQUILIBRIUM  513 

quantities  which  have  no  common  term.  Thus  we 
cannot  say  that  Adams  was  a  greater  mathematician 
than  was  Wagner  a  musician,  or  Shakespeare  a  poet. 
Hence  we  cannot  say  that  the  intellectual  capacity 
of  Adams  was  greater  than  that  of  Wagner  or  of 
Shakespeare. 

But  if  we  suppose  that  similar  kinds  of  intellectual 
capacities  can  be  compared  together,  we  can  draw  a 
comparison  between  two  diverse  intellects,  if  we 
use  a  common  term  for  the  purpose.  Thus,  if  we 
suppose  a  man  to  be  an  excellent  mathematician, 
and  at  the  same  time  an  excellent  musician,  we  can 
compare  him  with  Adams,  on  the  one  hand,  and  with 
Wagner  on  the  other.  And  if  we  admit  that  Adams 
be  the  standard  for  mathematical  ability,  we  can  com- 
pare the  total  capacity  of  the  supposititious  man  with 
that  of  both.  If  he  have  half  the  capacity  of  Adams 
for  mathematics,  and  half  that  of  Wagner  for  music 
we  can  say  that  his  total  capacity  is  equal  to  that  of 
either,  and  hence  that  the  total  capacities  of  the  three 
men  are  equal  to  each  other. 

We  can,  therefore,  conceive  that  while  the  brain 
of  each  would  be  very  nearly  equal  to  that  of  others 
the  variety  of  capacity  for  various  arts  and  sciences 
would  be  measurable  by  the  variety  of  wealth  which 
would  serve  to  develop  the  capacity  born  in  men  for 
special  pursuits  in  life.  Opportunity  in  the  use  of 
such  wealth  is  the  determinator  of  that  development 
now.  And  the  only  difference  between  the  present 
state  of  society  and  that  of  society  in  equilibrium,  is 
that  found  in  the  diffusion  of  the  wealth  which  sup- 
plies the  opportunity  needed. 

Such  equality  of   brain  and  capacity  would  make 


514  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

the  human  society  possessing  it  precisely  like  a  soci- 
ety of  hive-bees  in  all  basic  principles  except  one. 
The  working  bees  of  a  hive  are  very  nearly  alike  in 
capacity,  moral,  intellectual,  and  reproductive.  But 
the  bees  which  propagate  the  race  are  very  unlike  the 
workers,  anatomically  and  functionally.  The  repro- 
ductive bees  —  both  male  and  female,  that  is,  the 
queens  and  the  drones  —  exercise  their  nervous  and 
muscular  apparatus  in  the  lowest  possible  degrees. 
They  do  no  labor  whatever,  leaving  nutrition  free  to 
flow  to  the  vital,  or  sympathetic,  organs  at  the  expense 
of  the  sensory  ganglia.  This  fact  insures  the  cer- 
tainty of  propagation  in  quantity  large  enough  to 
maintain  the  race,  and  small  enough  to  maintain  the 
equilibrium  of  population. 

But  with  human  society  in  equilibrium,  the  motive 
for  mental  exertion  would  be  equal  in  all,  because  of 
a  variety  of  wealth  not  possessed  by  the  bees.  The 
function  of  human  propagation  is  not  delegated  to 
special  numbers  or  kinds  of  men,  but  is  exercised  by 
all  alike,  and  is  one  of  the  most  sacred  of  social 
rights.  Therefore,  with  equal  intellectual  capacities, 
and  equal  motives  for  intellectual  exertion,  the  num- 
ber of  offspring  from  united  pairs  would  be  equal 
also.  This  number  would  vary  slightly  from  the 
average  in  some  pairs,  but  only  in  the  degree  in 
which  the  brain  itself  would  vary.  And  as  this  varia- 
tion would  constantly  correct  itself,  through  the 
absence  of  selective  value  in  intelligence,  the  total 
number  of  the  population  would  be  corrected  also. 

We  have  now  considered  all  of  the  aspects  of  the 
equilibrium  of  population  except  two.  The  first  of 
these  is  the  actual  number  of  the  human  race  after 


XI  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM  515 

capital  shall  have  been  socialized  and  after  all  of  the 
inferior  races  shall  have  been  eliminated. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  growth  increases  as 
maturity  is  approached.  The  momentum  of  social 
motion  becomes  greater  as  the  equilibrium  is  neared. 
Therefore  the  checks  to  population  multiply  with 
increasing  growth  and  diffusion  of  wealth.  Hence 
we  should  expect  that  the  completion  of  maturity  will 
be  very  rapid  in  all  aspects,  as  the  Caucasian  societies 
of  men  progress.  Backward  races  of  Caucasians  must 
be  drawn  rapidly  into  the  current  of  social  forces,  as 
methods  of  communication  and  methods  of  industry 
spread  abroad.  And  as  these  races  are  compounded 
into  the  social  characters  of  the  European  races,  the 
world's  norm  of  population  must  be  speedily  reduced 
or  elevated  to  its  equilibrial  state. 

But  this  equilibrial  number  cannot  be  much  greater 
than  the  present  population  of  the  world.  This  we 
would  conclude  from  the  number  of  offspring  borne 
by  the  more  highly  intelligent  persons.  Of  course 
nothing  like  precise  calculations  can  be  made  in  this 
respect.  But  general  observation  would  seem  to  in- 
dicate that  if  the  equilibrial  number  shall  not  be  very 
much  smaller  than  the  present  total  population,  it 
cannot  be  very  much  larger.  This  question  is  in- 
volved, and  necessarily,  in  the  question  of  the  eco- 
nomic equilibrium.  The  future  stable  number  of 
human  population  will  depend  upon  the  number 
of  survivals  as  human  society  nears  its  final  state 
of  socialization.  If  the  number  be  larger  than  it  is 
now,  it  will  continue  to  remain  so  ;  if  smaller,  smaller 
it  will  continue  to  be.  This  truth  should  be  clear 
from  what  has  been  said  above.  For  if  diffusing 


516  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

wealth  acts  as  a  check  to  population  for  some,  it  acts 
as  a  stimulus  to  others,  until  use  and  quantity  of 
wealth  set  up  the  reaction. 

The  remaining  and  last  aspect  of  the  reproductive 
equilibrium  is  that  which  concerns  the  numbers  of 
the  sexes.  It  is  evident  that  if,  of  the  number  of  new 
individuals  produced,  there  should  be  progressive 
decrease  of  one  sex,  the  race  would  disappear.  The 
intimate  biological  causes  of  the  determination  of  sex 
in  the  mammalia  are  not  known.  But  we  have  no 
need  of  such  knowledge  to  be  assured  that  no  such 
disparity  in  the  number  of  the  sexes  could  be  devel- 
oped. Whatever  these  causes  may  be,  it  is  known 
that  some  individuals  produce  a  larger  number  of  one 
sex  than  of  the  other.  Some  pairs  produce  an  equal 
number  of  both  sexes  ;  some  produce  offspring  of  one 
sex  only.  But  the  male  transmits  all  of  his  male 
characters  to  the  male  offspring,  and  the  female  all 
of  the  female  characters  to  hers. 

Now  if  one  of  these  characters  be  greater  fecundity 
in  the  production  of  one  sex  rather  than  of  the  other, 
this  fecundity  is  passed  down  to  the  male  or  female 
offspring,  as  the  case  may  be.  And  as  this  particular 
character  has  no  value  for  natural  selection,  it  is  left 
free  to  correct  itself  by  the  indiscriminate  mingling 
of  all  degrees  of  this  kind  of  fecundity;  so  that  the 
number  of  males  and  females  remains  constant  in 
proportion,  that  proportion  being  as  one  is  to  one,  or 
as  equal  quantities  are  to  each  other. 

We  would  be  warranted  in  this  conclusion  by  one 
great  fact,  everywhere  observed,  if  by  no  other, 
namely,  that  the  number  of  males  and  females  of  the 
human  race  is  equal  always  in  those  societies  which 


XI  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM  517 

do  not  practise  infanticide  for  the  purpose  of  sup- 
pressing the  increase  of  one  of  the  sexes.  And  if 
the  play  of  natural  forces  now  operates  so  as  to  pro- 
duce equal  numbers  of  both  sexes,  we  cannot  con- 
ceive how  it  can  do  otherwise  so  long  as  the  essential 
nature  of  the  process  remains  unchanged. 

Thus,  to  the  other  characters  of  equality  in  the 
reproductive  equilibrium,  we  are  to  add  this  last  and 
necessary  one.  Its  necessity  has  been  evident  from 
the  beginning,  but  we  reserved  it  for  the  last  because 
of  its  universal  existence  now  and  in  the  past. 

We  cannot  conceive  of  the  economic  and  reproduc- 
tive equilibrium  we  have  described  without,  at  the 
same  time,  conceiving  of  an  equilibrium  in  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  nature  of  man,  individually  and 
socially.  In  other  terms,  the  individual  man  would 
be  perfectly  adapted  to  the  social  state  in  which  he 
would  live.  His  capacity  for  the  use  of  wealth  could 
not  be  increased,  because  he  would  have  the  use  of 
all  the  wealth  which  his  capacity  could  absorb.  He 
would  be  intellectually  and  morally  perfect  because 
the  standard  of  perfection  would  be  the  type,  and  not 
the  exception.  One  man  would  not  be  more  moral 
than  others,  because  the  motive  to  morality  would  be 
equal  in  all.  One  could  not  be  more  intellectual 
than  others,  because  the  size  of  the  brain  of  each 
would  vary  imperceptibly  from  that  of  the  others,  and 
because  the  stimulus  to  the  use  of  the  brain  would  be 
equally  powerful  in  all. 

Such  slight  variation  as  would  exist  would  con- 
stantly correct  itself,  because  it  would  offer  no  advan- 
tage to  be  seized  upon  and  developed  by  natural 
selection.  The  physical  and  intellectual  character  of 


518  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

man  would  be  very  little  different  from  what  it  is  now. 
That  difference  would  be  one  of  quantity,  not  of 
quality.  At  the  present  time,  the  moral  and  intellec- 
tual characters  of  civilized  men  vary  in  high  degree 
because  the  quantity  of  wealth  possessed  by  indi- 
viduals varies  in  like  degree.  If  the  average  man  is 
less  moral  and  intellectual  than  some  exceptional 
men,  it  is  because  the  average  man  is  comparatively 
poor.  And  if  he  be  more  moral  and  intellectual  than 
other  exceptional  men,  it  is  because  his  moral  motives 
are  more  nearly  in  equilibrium  with  his  economic 
motives  than  are  those  of  the  exceptionally  vicious. 

With  the  diffusion  of  wealth  the  motives  of  all  are 
brought  more  nearly  to  a  common  level.  Efficient 
methods  and  implements  of  communication  con- 
stantly facilitate  the  establishment  of  this  economico- 
moral  equilibrium.  Crime  decreases  as  the  diffusion 
of  wealth  progresses.  It  must  vanish  when  the  diffu- 
sion becomes  complete  and  continuous.  These  vari- 
ous equilibria  in  the  vital,  economic,  intellectual,  and 
ethical  processes  of  human  life  are  social  in  their 
character,  and  are  produced  by  the  action  of  the  law 
of  capitalization  as  it  expands  the  areas  of  wealth 
with  which  government  unites. 

But  the  socialization  of  wealth  used  as  capital 
facilitates  the  use  of  capital  by  the  individual,  and 
this  private  use  of  capital  reacts  upon  the  process  of 
socialization,  generally,  by  developing  in  men  the 
special  aptitudes  which  they  inherit  from  their  ances- 
tors. Thus  the  process  of  capitalization  which  multi- 
plies public  wealth,  multiplies  private  wealth  also. 
Social  wealth,  ever  flowing  to  private  uses,  causes  an 
overflow  of  social  producers  into  the  category  of  pri- 


XI  SOCIAL   EQUILIBRIUM  519 

vate  producers.  Wealth,  being  the  stimulant  to 
special  capacity  in  the  arts  and  sciences,  would  cause, 
if  freely  diffused,  a  rapid  selection  of  occupation  for 
which  the  individual  is  best  fitted.  For  no  man 
selects  and  pursues  an  occupation  which  is  difficult 
and  painful,  when  he  is  free  to  choose  one  which  is 
easy,  and  hence  pleasurable.  But  if  his  wealth  be 
large  and  varied,  he  will  use  that  part  of  it  the  use  of 
which  gives  him  pleasure,  neglecting  to  use  that  part 
of  it  whose  use  gives  him  pain. 

Thus  we  can  conceive  that,  with  continuous  and 
complete  diffusion  of  wealth,  men  would  be  rendered 
more  proficient  in  all  their  capacities,  and  that  the 
number  of  proficient  men  would  constantly  increase, 
until  proficiency  in  all  would  be  brought  to  its  highest 
possible  degree.  The  products  of  social  capital  would 
be  characterized  by  their  utility  with  due  regard  to 
beauty ;  those  of  private  capital  by  beauty  with  due 
regard  to  use.  But  in  both  kinds  of  product,  utility 
and  beauty  would  increase  together,  until  the  lowest 
utility  would  be  matched  with  the  highest  possible 
degree  of  beauty,  and  vice  versa. 

There  can  be  no  cessation  to  the  action  of  the 
increment  of  capacity  as  long  as  there  is  any  wealth 
remaining  to  be  socialized.  This  would  mean  that 
there  would  be  no  longer  any  increment  of  desire  in 
the  individual.  But  the  social  increment  would  only 
be  increased  by  this  disappearance  of  the  individual 
increment.  Economic  purposes  fully  satisfied,  society 
is  left  free  to  act  from  motives  other  than  economic. 
Social  purpose  then  shifts  to  moral,  intellectual,  and 
aesthetic  purposes,  and  progress  goes  on  with  the  con- 
comitant shifting  of  the  moral  sense  to  intellectual 


520  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

and  aesthetic  standards.  So  it  is  that  the  sense  of 
right  and  wrong  no  longer  pertains  to  life  and  prop- 
erty when  life  and  property  are  perfectly  safe  from 
harm.  Moral  standards  are  then  only  the  gauge  of 
art  and  science,  and  the  moral  man  must  then  feel 
repugnance  to  ideas  which  are  contrary  to  known  or 
demonstrable  truth. 

This  kind  of  morality  is  now  the  general  character 
of  scientific  men.  To  assert,  as  being  a  fact,  some- 
thing which  he  cannot  demonstrate,  is  as  repugnant 
to  the  genuinely  scientific  man  as  would  be  a  cruel 
and  unnecessary  lie  to  the  man  of  generous  and  just 
impulses.  The  scientific  man  has  discovered  that 
deception  of  any  kind  surely  defeats  itself  sooner  or 
later.  But  the  scientific  motive  for  truth-telling  has 
nothing  to  do  with  this  fact.  Its  root  lies  deeper. 
For  the  purpose  of  science  is  alone  the  discovery  of 
truth ;  and  if  truth  remains  hidden,  no  quantity  of 
deceit,  conscious  or  unconscious,  however  large  or 
skilfully  wrought,  can  disclose  the  hiding-place.  But 
this  moral  character  of  scientific  men  would  necessa- 
rily become  the  common  character  were  the  majority 
of  men  imbued  with  the  scientific  spirit.  Without 
evasion,  equivocation,  or  palliation,  to  say,  "  I  do  not 
know,"  requires  the  strength  of  a  highly  intellectual 
and  delicately  moral  nature.  Many  men  now  believe 
many  things  because  they  do  not  know  many  facts 
bearing  on  the  matter  of  their  beliefs.  But  were  all 
men  intellectual  enough  to  be  intellectually  moral, 
they  would  be  less  liable  to  practise  unconscious 
deceit  upon  themselves,  and  they  could  not  practise 
conscious  deceit  upon  others. 

The  intellectual  man  cannot  deceive  himself.     The 


XI  SOCIAL  EQUILIBRIUM  521 

moral  man  cannot  deceive  others.  But  if  the  intel- 
lectual man  be  moral  also,  he  can  deceive  neither 
himself  nor  others  from  any  conceivable  motive.  If 
asked  a  question  which  he  cannot  answer,  he  must 
reply,  "  I  do  not  know."  Belief  without  evidence  is 
self-deception.  And  to  teach  to  others  beliefs  for 
which  evidence  is  wanting,  is  self-deception  upon  a 
social  scale.  But  to  teach  a  belief  of  which  the 
teacher  has  no  evidence,  and  in  which  he  himself 
does  not  place  faith,  is  a  practice  impossible  to  the 
intellectual  man  who  is  also  a  moral  one. 

What  we  have  said  of  scientific  ideas  is  applicable 
to  aesthetic  ideas.  That  man  who  is  proficient  in  one 
art  can  have  no  desire  to  practise  another  in  which  he 
is  not  proficient.  For  aesthetic  effort,  like  scientific 
effort,  is  directed  toward  excellence  of  achievement. 
The  purpose  of  the  artist  is  to  produce  a  thing  of 
beauty,  and  if  his  efforts  can  result  only  in  the  pro- 
duction of  things  ugly,  as  compared  with  the  products 
of  others,  all  motive  to  action  is  taken  away.  The 
higher  his  proficiency,  the  more  repugnant  to  him 
will  be  the  idea  of  producing  anything  in  which  his 
highest  expression  is  wanting.  To  pursue  art  for 
anything  but  the  satisfaction  the  product  gives  to 
the  aesthetic  desires  of  men,  is  as  repugnant  to  the 
true  artist  as  would  be  charlatanism  to  the  true  man 
of  science.  Whenever  the  artist  produces  for  com- 
mercial purposes,  the  quality  of  the  things  he  creates 
is  low  in  aesthetic  value.  And  the  same  may  be  said 
of  the  man  of  science. 

The  highest  achievements  of  art  are  those  in  which 
the  utility-value,  save  for  aesthetic  purposes,  is  lowest. 
And  this  is  true,  also,  of  the  highest  achievements  of 


522  THE   LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

science.  The  practical  uses  of  a  musical  composition, 
a  statue,  a  painting,  or  a  poem,  may  be  said  to  be  the 
same  as  those  of  the  discoveries  of  Newton's  law  and 
similar  generalizations  of  scientific  thought.  The 
aesthetic  man,  who  is  also  a  moral  man,  cannot  pro- 
nounce bad  art  to  be  good  art.  If  his  aesthetic  knowl- 
edge be  inadequate,  he  may  deceive  himself,  and 
unconsciously  deceive  others.  If  his  moral  nature 
be  inadequate,  he  may  deceive  others  while  he  himself 
remains  undeceived.  But  if  his  moral  nature  and 
his  aesthetic  skill  are  both  adequate,  he  can  deceive 
neither  himself  nor  others  from  motives  of  any  con- 
ceivable kind.  Therefore  the  unproficient  artist,  if 
he  be  a  moral  man,  feels  repugnance  to  the  idea  of 
deceiving  others  with  products  he  knows  himself  to 
be  unworthy  the  value  placed  upon  them.  If  he  pro- 
duce for  economical  purposes,  his  moral  sense  may 
not  be  painfully  pressed  upon,  but  he  will  recede 
from  the  highest  standards  of  art,  and  his  aesthetic 
nature  will  suffer  a  corresponding  depression. 

As  society  progresses  toward  this  multiplex  equi- 
librium, the  mechanical  nature  of  its  life  process 
becomes  more  clear.  A  wealthy  and  democratic 
community,  with  highly  efficient  methods  of  com- 
munication, acts  with  quickly  coordinated  impulses, 
not  unlike  those  of  the  individual.  The  impulses 
of  each  is  the  impulse  of  all.  The  action  of  each, 
either  personal  or  by  proxy,  is  the  action  of  all.  Com- 
mon moral  motives  produce  uniformity  of  conduct. 
While  individuals  tend  to  vary,  variations  tend  to  be 
compounded  into  the  type.  The  idea  of  the  right  to 
live  being  organic  in  such  society,  the  right  to  the 
means  by  which  life  is  sustained  becomes  organic 


xi  SOCIAL   EQUILIBRIUM  523 

also.  The  individual  surrenders  to  the  state  only 
when  surrender  best  serves  the  individual  good. 
The  state  surrenders  to  the  individual  only  when 
surrender  best  serves  the  good  of  the  state.  Sur- 
render by  both  individual  and  state  is  mechanically 
necessary  because  it  is  economically  good ;  and 
because  it  is  thus  good,  it  is  morally  right.  With 
this  equilibrium  of  the  state  and  the  individual  comes 
the  equilibrium  of  intellect  with  morality  and  of 
beauty  with  utility.  Next  in  importance  to  the  re- 
pugnance to  pain  inflicted  on  the  individual  body 
is  the  repugnance  in  the  individual  mind  to  ideas  of 
pain  inflicted  on  the  body  social. 

With  social  consciousness  continuous  and  complete, 
there  can  be  no  self-deception,  individually,  and  no 
conscious  deception  socially.  The  individual  who  is 
intellectually  moral  is  also  scientifically  truthful.  He 
cannot  be  otherwise.  And  the  individual  who  is 
economically  moral  is  also  economically  just.  He 
cannot  be  otherwise.  For  if  he  perceive  that  an 
injury  to  another  is  an  injury  to  himself,  he  must  be 
just  to  others  that  he  may  be  just  to  himself.  And 
no  truth  could  be  clearer,  no  perception  more  forcibly 
plain,  than  this  perception  and  this  truth  in  a  society 
in  which  the  right  to  the  means  of  life  would  be  equal 
for  all. 

If  we  conceive  of  human  society  having  reached 
this  twofold  final  equilibrium  of  economy  and  repro- 
duction, we  shall  conceive  of  its  having  accomplished 
its  twofold  final  purpose.  That  purpose  is  the  sum 
of  the  purposes  of  the  individual.  The  individual 
purpose  is  the  amplest  liberty  for  the  basic  functions 
of  nutrition  and  propagation.  And,  for  the  indi- 


524  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP,  xi 

vidual  in  a  social  state,  that  liberty  is  found  to  be 
best  served  when  it  is  best  served  for  all  alike.  The 
individual  finds  that  the  socialization  of  wealth  of  one 
kind  facilitates  the  private  use  and  private  posses- 
sion of  wealth  of  every  kind.  Being  rich,  he  satisfies 
every  desire  that  wealth  can  satisfy.  Being  moral, 
he  has  no  desire  for  acts  which  would  be  painful  to 
others,  because  perceived  to  be  painful  to  self.  Being 
intellectual,  he  is  truthful;  for  the  desire  of  the  scien- 
tific intellect  is  a  knowledge  of  the  truth  whatever 
may  be  its  nature.  Being  aesthetic,  he  appreciates 
proportion  between  utility  and  beauty.  He  can  have 
no  idea  of  superiority  in  the  mere  persons  of  men,  for 
every  individual  is  the  social  type  of  the  race. 

Thus  in  the  realization  of  the  final  purpose  of 
social  motion,  is  realized  the  ideal  of  the  economic, 
the  intellectual,  the  moral,  and  the  aesthetic  man. 


CHAPTER   XII 

MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND    CONCLUSION 

THE  intellectual  development  of  the  human  race 
has  been  a  slow  and  a  continuous  movement.  Men 
have  enlarged  the  scope  and  the  quantity  of  their 
natural  knowledge  in  very  much  the  same  way  as 
that  which  has  characterized  the  growth  of  language, 
the  rise  of  the  arts,  and  the  progress  of  invention. 

From  age  to  age  the  sciences  have  multiplied  in 
quantity  and  in  kind,  ever  adding  to  their  store  fresh 
accretions  of  fact,  and  a  more  thorough  comprehen- 
sion of  causes.  Like  the  rippling  of  water  into  which 
a  pebble  has  been  dropped  the  movement  of  human 
thought  has  been  always  outward,  spreading  the 
circle  of  its  action  to  farther  and  still  farther  con- 
fines, and  pushing  its  way  into  regions  before  un- 
dreamed of  and  unknown. 

The  general  purpose  of  science,  if  it  may  be  said 
to  have  a  purpose  at  all,  is  to  reduce  to  harmony  the 
phenomena  of  nature,  or  at  least  to  understand  the 
harmony  which  is  supposed  to  prevail  throughout 
the  entire  range  of  existence. 

This  notion  of  the  universal  harmony  of  nature  is 
not  a  new  one.  It  is  one  of  the  earliest  perceptions 
in  the  history  of  human  thought.  The  Greeks  had 
it,  the  Egyptians  had  it,  the  Hindoos  had  it  ages 

525 


526  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

before  the  Greeks  were  born.  It  underlies  the  noble 
ontology  of  the  Brahmins,  who  conceived  that  the 
universe  was  one  infinite,  sentient  thing,  pulsing 
through  eternity  with  a  mighty  rhythm  of  motion 
which  they  described  as  the  "  days "  and  the 
"  nights  "  of  Brahm  —  emanation  and  absorption, 
evolution  and  dissolution,  activity  and  rest. 

The  earliest  efforts  of  intellectual  man  were  bent 
toward  the  discovery  of  the  nature  of  this  assumed 
universal  harmony.  The  aspirations  of  intellectual 
men  to-day  are  directed  to  the  accomplishment  of 
the  selfsame  thing.  The  existence  of  the  harmony 
is  assumed  by  all  alike  :  by  the  theologian,  who  seeks 
to  supply  it  with  a  cause  in  the  existence  and  the 
doings  of  a  deity ;  by  the  scientific  man,  who  endeav- 
ors to  account  for  it  without  that  hypothesis  ;  and  by 
the  metaphysician,  who  looks  for  its  explanation  in 
what  he  calls  the  nature  of  the  "  human  mind." 
There  is  no  dispute  about  the  existence  of  the 
harmony  itself.  The  only  dispute  is  that  which  is 
concerned  with  its  character  and  its  cause. 

In  the  search  after  truth  it  has  been  found  that 
the  methods  of  modern  science  have  been  highly  suc- 
cessful. With  the  expansion  of  proved  knowledge 
natural  facts  are  progressively  brought  into  clear  and 
more  causal  relations  with  one  another.  The  ripples 
of  human  thought  are  found  to  be  really  the  cumula- 
tive effects  of  one  general  and  continuous  movement 
—  to  be  only  wider  perceptions  of  simple  facts  and 
the  relations  between  them.  Scientific  investigation 
only  serves  to  make  deeper  and  clearer  our  precep- 
tions  of  the  harmonious  character  of  the  universe,  and 
indefinitely  to  extend  those  perceptions  to  ever  en- 


xii  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND   CONCLUSION          527 

larging  fields  once  supposed  to  be  closed  to  the  ave- 
nues of  rational  and  human  inquiry. 

There  are  certain  facts,  however,  which,  in  the 
minds  of  some,  are  still  held  to  transcend  the  merely 
rational  methods  of  investigation,  and  therefore  to  lie 
without  the  possibilities  of  simple  demonstration. 
The  chief  of  these  are  those  phenomena  of  human 
life  usually  classified  under  the  term  "moral."  Facts 
of  almost  every  other  order  are  eagerly  submitted  to 
the  so-called  scientific  method,  but  the  facts  of  this 
order  are  held  to  be  exempt,  the  contention  being 
that  the  moral  nature  of  man  can  never  be  success- 
fully analyzed  by  the  implements  of  thought  used 
with  such  brilliant  success  in  other  departments  of 
knowledge.  That  method,  it  is  claimed,  must  fail 
when  applied  to  moral  phenomena  because  these  phe- 
nomena are  of  an  order  unique  in  all  existence,  and 
hence  unapproachable  by  methods  of  attack  to  which 
phenomena  of  other  kinds  are  seen  to  yield  with  more 
or  less  facility. 

It  may  be  remarked,  in  a  general  way,  that  the 
exactness  of  any  science  is  dependent  upon  the  regu- 
larity presented  by  the  facts  to  be  accounted  for.  In 
astronomy,  for  example,  we  are  well  acquainted  with 
the  laws  of  the  solar  system,  because  the  movements 
of  the  planets  are  seen  to  repeat  themselves,  over  and 
over  again,  with  a  measured  regularity  to  be  reck- 
oned upon  with  certainty.  The  same  phenomenon 
presents  itself  at  recurrent  intervals,  and  there  is 
seen  to  be  a  continuous  rhythm  and  harmony  under- 
lying all  the  varied  actions  of  the  planets. 

But  this  regularity  of  recurrent  sequence  seems  to 
disappear  when  we  extend  our  observation  to  the 


528  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

nebulae  and  to  the  stars.  We  do  not  doubt  that  there 
is  harmony  in  the  movements  of  the  stars  as  well  as 
in  those  of  the  planets,  but  we  must  confess  our  ina- 
bility to  perceive  it,  at  least  in  the  general  move- 
ments of  the  stellar  system. 

If  we  look  at  the  question  of  man's  moral  nature  in 
this  light,  it  is  probable  that  we  can  explain  the  reluc- 
tance of  many  thoughtful  persons  to  include  moral 
phenomena  within  the  scope  of  exact  science.  If 
there  is  universal  harmony  in  the  moral  nature  of 
man,  it  is  conceived  by  many  to  be  so  obscure  as 
to  defy  all  attempts  at  understanding  it  by  methods 
commonly  used  to  grasp  the  meaning  of  the  other 
facts  of  existence.  Therefore,  it  is  argued,  no  exact 
science  of  morals  can  ever  arise. 

If  it  be  held,  on  the  contrary,  that  such  a  science 
is  not  only  possible,  but  is  even  now  taking  shape, 
and  is  rapidly  reducing  the  facts  of  man's  moral 
nature  to  certain  definite  laws  of  action,  it  should  be 
plain  that  any  new  perceptions  of  regularity  in  moral 
phenomena  will  be  highly  serviceable  as  a  means  of 
clearing  the  ground  for  a  better  understanding  of  all 
the  facts  as  we  see  them.  Let  us  inquire  into  this 
aspect  of  the  question,  and  ascertain  if  the  moral 
ideas  of  men,  seemingly  so  incongruous  and  unpro- 
portional, can  be  reduced  to  anything  like  a  perfect 
sequence  of  cause  and  effect. 

The  most  sublimated  notions  of  right  and  wrong 
may  be  traced  at  last  to  the  intimate  sense  of  life 
which  men  possess.  Whether  it  be  life  here  or  now, 
or  life  hereafter,  it  is  yet  life.  And  as  we  can  con- 
ceive of  no  human  life  without  first  postulating  it  as 
we  know  it  here,  the  life  here  must  be  the  principal 
element  in  all  our  considerations. 


xii  MORAL  EQUILIBRIUM  AND  CONCLUSION         529 

Now,  if  there  is  any  universal  fact  which  must  be 
considered  the  prime  material  of  moral  science,  it  is 
found  in  the  moral  sense  which  men  of  all  known 
ages  and  kinds  have  possessed  in  common.  So  far, 
we  have  an  uniform  and  general  basis  upon  which  to 
build.  But  this  universal  fact  presents  so  many  and 
such  varied  forms  that  it  becomes  obscure  when  we 
attempt  to  make  a  closer  examination  of  its  minor 
phenomena.  From  these  minor  phenomena  all  regu- 
larity is  apparently  absent.  Moral  ideas  vary  in 
almost  every  one  of  their  aspects.  They  seem  to 
have  no  law  of  regular  and  recurring  sequence  either 
in  space  or  in  time. 

That  which  is  essentially  right  in  one  community 
is  essentially  wrong  in  another  not  very  far  distant. 
Communities  separated  by  vast  distances,  and  alto- 
gether strangers  in  kinship  of  blood,  have  moral 
standards  very  much  alike  ;  and  this  likeness  is  appar- 
ently not  the  result  of  communication  between  the 
two  communities,  nor  yet  of  a  common  influence 
upon  the  minds  of  both.  But  this  is  not  all.  Indi- 
viduals in  the  same  community  —  even  full  brothers 
in  blood  — differ  much  in  their  conceptions  of  moral 
values.  One  will  condemn  conduct  as  being  wrong 
which  another  will  approve  as  right.  In  most  com- 
munities, nay,  in  all,  there  are  distinct  moral  codes  for 
the  two  sexes.  And,  moreover,  what  is  right  for  man 
and  wrong  for  woman  in  some  communities  is  wrong 
for  man  and  right  for  woman  in  other  communities. 
These  facts  go  to  show  the  irregularity,  or  obscurity, 
of  moral  phenomena  in  point  of  locality. 

In  point  of  time  the  same  observations  hold  good. 
Various  communities  existing  in  the  same  age,  or  the 


530  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

same  year,  have  moral  ideas  which  are  very  diverse ; 
whereas  many  communities  now  living  have  moral 
ideas  very  similar  to  those  of  peoples  that  have  been 
dead  for  ages,  and  of  whose  moral  concepts  the  exist- 
ing communities  have  never  even  heard. 

More  than  this ;  the  moral  ideas  of  a  community 
change  from  century  to  century,  from  year  to  year, 
and  from  day  to  day.  This  is  true  also  of  the  moral 
notions  of  individuals.  What  an  individual  considers 
right  in  his  youth,  he  may  consider  wrong  at  middle 
life  and  indifferent  in  his  old  age.  There  seems  to 
be  no  universal  standard  by  which  we  can  measure 
with  certainty  the  flux  of  moral  opinion,  or  fix  its 
movements  to  an  unvarying  law.  The  obscurity 
seems  to  be  profound,  and  even  hopelessly  so. 

If  we  look  into  the  effects  of  religious  belief  upon 
moral  ideas,  the  obscurity  seems  only  to  be  intensified. 
Many  are  convinced  that  the  religious  beliefs  of  a 
nation  are  accountable  for  its  moral  opinions.  They 
believe  that  it  is  religion  which  regulates  morals,  and 
that  the  difference  in  the  moral  ideas  of  communities 
is  the  outgrowth  of  various  theological  beliefs. 

The  fallaciousness  of  this  notion  at  once  appears 
when  we  look  into  the  facts  of  history,  or  into  the 
everyday  life  of  ourselves.  For  communities  of 
highly  diverse  religious  faiths  have  very  similar 
moral  notions,  and  individuals  of  the  same  commu- 
nity differ  in  this  respect  likewise. 

Two  persons  of  the  selfsame  religious  convictions 
will  vary  in  opinion  as  to  the  moral  value  of  certain 
conduct ;  and  two  of  diverse  religious  beliefs  will  per- 
fectly agree  with  each  other  when  the  question  is  one 
of  right  or  wrong  concerning  some  special  act.  On 


xil  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND   CONCLUSION         531 

the  other  hand,  an  individual  without  religion  of  any 
kind  will  agree  with  the  moral  opinions  of  those  who 
have  religions  of  various  kinds. 

In  this  respect  the  relations  of  time  and  locality 
seem  to  have  no  importance  whatever.  Ancient 
peoples,  with  religions  now  long  extinct,  held  the 
same  moral  opinions  as  do  modern  peoples  with  liv- 
ing theological  systems. 

To  steal,  to  violate  chastity,  to  dishonor  parents,  to 
kill  —  these  things  have  been  immoral  since  men  be- 
gan to  leave  records  of  their  social  life.  To  do  any  of 
these  things  has  been  wrong  in  civilized  communities 
of  all  ages  and  in  all  places  ;  in  communities  which 
have  worshipped  one  god  or  many,  and  in  communi- 
ties which  have  worshipped  no  god  at  all.  The  moral 
valuation  placed  upon  acts  of  this  kind  has  been  per- 
fectly equal  in  the  minds  of  Mohammedans,  Jews, 
Christians,  and  Parsees,  whose  religions  are  mono- 
theistic. The  Greeks,  the  Romans,  and  the  Egyp- 
tians, whose  religions  were  polytheistic,  held  acts  of 
this  kind  in  similar  moral  detestation.  And  the  same 
is  perfectly  true  of  the  Buddhists,  whose  religion  is 
positively  atheistic. 

Here  we  have  an  universal  fact  of  extraordinary 
significance.  If  we  are  rational,  we  must  assume  that 
it  must  have  an  universal  cause.  What  is  it  that 
makes  the  Buddhist,  who  has  no  god  at  all,  agree 
with  the  Greek  who  fills  the  earth  and  the  sky  with 
divinities  ?  Why  is  it  that  the  Jew  and  Mohammedan, 
who  detest  a  plurality  of  gods,  are  at  one  with  the 
Christian,  who  believes  in  a  triune  deity,  and  with 
the  Brahmin,  who  is  a  pantheist  ? 

It   would   appear,   now,  that  we  are   approaching 


532  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

something  akin  to  that  uniformity  in  moral  ideas 
which  is  the  essentially  desirable  basis  of  a  moral 
science.  We  find  that  all  men  agree  as  to  the  moral 
value  of  conduct  which  is  seen  to  interfere  with 
human  life  and  its  functions,  and  with  the  wealth 
which  enables  man  to  live  in  a  free  and  happy  state. 
Here  is  a  basis  of  morality  quite  distinct  from  reli- 
gious faith  of  any  kind.  All  men  value  life  and  its 
pleasures.  All  men  value  the  wealth  which  secures 
for  them  the  amplitude  of  the  life  they  love.  All 
men  are  at  one  in  the  condemnation  of  conduct  which 
tends  to  limit  that  amplitude,  or  to  suppress  the 
process  of  living.  Moral  ideas  in  other  matters  may 
be  highly  diverse,  but  in  these  they  are  always  of  a 
kind.  As  we  approach  nearer  to  the  process  of  life 
itself,  the  phenomena  of  the  moral  nature  of  man  be- 
come regular,  more  uniform,  more  perfect  in  their 
sequence  of  cause  and  effect,  more  harmonious  in  their 
relations  to  one  another,  and  hence  more  easily  sus- 
ceptible to  the  methods  of  exact  science. 

Still  there  are  many  minor  irregularities  which 
appear  in  a  considerable  degree  to  obscure  the  phe- 
nomena, and  it  is  to  these  we  must  now  turn  our 
attention.  While  all  men  seem  to  agree  in  certain 
fundamental  conceptions  concerning  life  and  wealth, 
yet  it  is  true  that  their  conceptions  in  this  respect 
differ  vastly  in  different  ages  and  in  different  times. 
How  can  we  explain  these  minor  variations  ?  An 
answer  to  the  question  will  be  found  in  the  circum- 
stances of  the  wealth  of  peoples,  or  rather  in  the 
economic  state  peculiar  to  various  communities.  In- 
asmuch as  one  community  varies  from  another  in 
the  quantity  of  its  wealth  and  the  degree  in  which 


xii  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM  AND   CONCLUSION         533 

the  wealth  is  diffused,  in  so  much  will  it  vary  from 
the  other  in  its  moral  notions  concerning  life  and 
property.  This  law  of  moral  science  will  be  made 
clear  if  we  consider  it  in  the  light  of  one  of  the  most 
conspicuous  facts  of  human  history. 

There  will  be  no  dispute  as  to  whether  or  not  the 
institution  of  slavery  is  a  matter  to  be  discussed  pro 
and  con  from  a  moral  point  of  view.  Seeing  that  com- 
munities that  have  abolished  it  are  wont  to  point  to 
that  fact  as  a  guaranty  of  their  very  high  notions  of 
the  rights  of  man,  we  may  be  sure  that  there  is  about 
slavery  something  highly  repugnant  to  the  moral 
sense  of  a  very  large  part  of  the  human  race.  One 
of  the  principal  commendations  made  for  its  own 
alleged  very  superior  moral  character  by  the  Church 
of  Rome  is  the  fact  the  popes  have  discouraged  chattel 
slavery  at  all  times,  and  have  abolished  it  wherever 
they  could.  It  was  slavery  that  caused  the  civil  war 
of  the  United  States,  and  the  institution  is  now  held 
in  abhorrence  by  almost  all  the  civilized  peoples  of 
the  earth.  Yet  it  will  not  be  denied  that  this  social 
institution  has  been  regarded  as  highly  moral  by  many 
peoples  in  many  ages,  and  it  is  still  so  regarded  by 
some.  We  may  arrive  at  the  source  of  this  difference 
of  opinion  if  we  arrive  at  the  source  of  the  opinions 
themselves,  and  for  that  we  have  not  far  to  look. 
Slavery  is  approved  by  a  community  in  which  the 
institution  is  in  force  because  slavery  is  an  essential 
function  of  the  economic  life  of  the  people.  The 
slave  is  no  more  than  an  important  part  of  the  com- 
munity's wealth.  The  moral  ideas  of  the  slave-own- 
ing community  are  inseparably  bound  up  with  its 
economic  system  ;  and  as  the  disestablishment  of  that 


534  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

system  is  conceived  to  be  harmful,  the  institution  of 
slavery  is  held  to  be  good. 

But  what  is  the  state  of  wealth  flowing  from  an 
economic  system  of  this  kind?  Simply  this,  that  one 
class  of  persons  receive  all  but  an  insignificant  part 
of  the  total  wealth  produced.  The  slave  is  given  just 
enough  to  make  his  labor  most  highly  productive  and 
the  master  retains  the  rest.  In  fact  the  slave  is  no 
more  than  a  machine  which  costs  a  certain  per  centum 
of  the  product  for  its  maintenance  in  repair. 

What,  now,  is  the  source  of  the  moral  abhorrence 
in  which  slavery  is  held  by  a  free  community  ?  This 
will  be  a  more  difficult  question  to  answer  than  was 
the  other.  In  a  free  community  there  are  somewhat 
different  relations  of  wealth  from  those  we  have  seen 
to  prevail  when  slavery  is  practised.  Laborers  do  not 
form  a  part  of  the  exchangeable  wealth,  and  their 
bodies  are  not  bought  and  sold  by  the  capitalists. 
Any  laborer  may  at  any  time  become  a  capitalist,  and 
the  ownership  of  any  kind  of  wealth  is  open  to  him. 
There  is  no  legal  bond  irrevocably  uniting  his  body 
to  the  service  of  the  capitalist  save  that  which  he  him- 
self freely  makes  and  which  is  equally  binding  in  law 
upon  the  man  who  employs  him.  These  relations 
between  wealth  and  men  are  seen  to  be  very  different 
from  those  obtaining  under  the  regime  of  chattel 
slavery. 

In  these  facts  are  found  the  source  of  the  moral 
abhorrence  in  which  slavery  is  held  by  a  free  people ; 
for  a  free  people  cannot  imagine  the  institution  as 
being  established  among  themselves  without  at  the 
same  time  conceiving  the  possibility  of  themselves 
being  slaves.  But  if  this  be  true,  its  truth  is  due  to 


xii  MORAL  EQUILIBRIUM  AND  CONCLUSION         535 

the  free  use  and  ownership  of  capital  which  have 
replaced  slavery  in  every  progressing  community. 

Here  again  is  seen  the  intimate  connection  between 
the  government  of  a  people  and  its  economic  system. 
Government  arises  out  of  the  industrial  life  of  a  politi- 
cal group,  and  we  cannot  conceive  of  the  latter  being 
changed  without  conceiving  of  a  change  in  the  former. 
The  principles  upon  which  a  slave  community  is  ruled 
are  quite  different  from  those  regulating  the  life  of 
a  free  people ;  and  it  is  very  easy  to  apprehend  that 
this  fact  is  altogether  due  to  the  difference  in  the 
diffusive  character  of  the  wealth  of  both.  In  the  free 
community  every  individual  has  an  opportunity  of 
becoming  a  capitalist,  and  can  thus  become  possessed 
of  a  share  of  political  power ;  whereas  in  the  slave- 
group  the  bondsman  is  himself  but  a  part  of  the  wealth 
owned  by  the  rulers.  Under  the  regime  of  free  labor 
every  possible  capitalist  is  possessed  of  political  power, 
because  of  the  fact  that  he  may  at  any  time  actually 
acquire  capital ;  and  in  this  way  forms  of  government 
are  constantly  expanded  to  meet  the  progressive  dif- 
fusion of  wealth.  The  highest  expansion  of  govern- 
mental form  is  found  when  bare  manhood  becomes 
the  basis  of  sovereignty. 

A  pure  democracy  in  which  every  individual  is  co- 
sovereign  with  all  other  individuals  is  the  freest  pos- 
sible form  of  government.  If  women  were  given  the 
right  to  vote  in  the  United  States,  the  government 
of  that  country  would  be  one  of  this  kind.  And  we 
may  add  that  the  only  contention  made  for  woman- 
suffrage  is  the  fact  that  wealth  in  the  hands  of  women 
is  subjected  to  taxation. 

The  source  of  universal  manhood-suffrage  lies,  there- 


536  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

fore,  in  the  warrant  for  assuming  that  the  man  is 
the  owner  of  wealth,  and  hence  has  the  right  to  rule. 
All  that  is  needed  for  the  American  form  of  govern- 
ment to  become  the  ideal  of  political  equality  is  the 
extension  of  the  suffrage  to  women.  The  moral 
code  of  every  community  is  based  primarily  upon  its 
political  state,  and  hence  it  is  seen  that  economic 
systems,  governments,  and  moral  codes  are,  at  their 
root,  one  and  the  same  thing. 

If  this  be  true,  we  should  find  diverse  moral  notions 
concerning  slavery  to  be  accompanied  by  diverse  eco- 
nomic systems ;  and  this,  indeed,  is  the  fact  in  all 
human  history  from  its  beginning  down  to  the  present 
time.  Societies  in  which  slavery  has  existed,  no  mat- 
ter what  their  form  of  government,  have  never  shared 
their  political  power  with  the  slave.  Under  republic  or 
monarchy,  the  slave,  having  no  economic  power,  could 
have  no  political  power,  and  the  form  of  government, 
as  well  as  its  substance,  has  been,  for  him,  the  same. 

Similar  economic  systems  produce  similar  moral 
ideas.  This  is  perfectly  true  of  all  societies  regardless 
of  their  situation  in  time  or  in  locality.  The  Greeks 
and  the  Romans  resembled  each  other  strikingly  in 
their  moral  codes  and  in  their  economic  life ;  whereas 
modern  Italy  differs  from  both  in  these  two  particu- 
lars. If  we  compare  the  moral  notions  of  Australia, 
Canada,  and  the  United  States,  we  shall  find  them 
somewhat  similar ;  more  like  to  one  another  than  any 
one  of  the  three  is  like  to  England  in  this  respect. 
The  likeness  and  the  difference  are  both  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  economic  life  of  the  colonies  and  the 
republic  are  more  nearly  similar  than  that  of  any  of 
them  is  similar  to  that  of  England. 


xii  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND   CONCLUSION         537 

The  truth  of  the  general  statement  will  be  en- 
hanced if  we  compare  a  savage  community  with 
a  civilized  one.  Among  all  civilized  peoples,  living 
or  extinct,  it  has  been  highly  immoral  to  kill  one's 
parents.  But  most  savage  communities  pay  scant 
respect  to  progenitors.  The  Eskimos  slaughter  their 
old  precisely  as  bees  do  the  useless  drones  and  the 
superfluous  queens  ;  and  they  deem  the  practice  a 
virtue.  The  Eskimo  who  would  refuse  to  kill  his 
parents  when  they  became  a  burden  upon  the  com- 
munity, would  be  reprobated  as  an  immoral  member 
of  society.  In  the  United  States,  or  in  France,  the 
practice  would  be  inconceivably  wicked.  Why  this 
striking  difference  ?  There  need  be  no  mystery 
about  it  at  all.  The  Eskimo  is  poor ;  the  European 
is  rich.  Give  the  Eskimo  the  wealth  of  France  and 
his  moral  notions  in  this  respect  will  probably  change  ; 
for  he  does  not  kill  his  parents  because  his  natural 
instincts  impel  him  to  do  so,  but  because  food  is  at 
a  premium,  and  the  aged  members  of  the  community 
are  no  longer  able  to  assist  in  securing  it.  If  pleni- 
tude of  wealth  does  not  work  a  like  effect  in  hive-bees, 
it  is  only  because  the  insect  produces  two  thousand 
young  per  diem,  whereas  man  can  produce  but  one  in 
somewhat  less  than  a  year.  But  plenitude  of  wealth 
is  not  without  its  effect  upon  the  bee  also.  For  we 
see  that  when,  by  a  scarcity  of  queens,  the  existence 
of  the  drones  does  not  threaten  the  life  of  the  group, 
the  drones  are  allowed  to  live  in  idleness  and  eat  ad 
libittim. 

All  these  things  materially  assist  us  in  the  per- 
ception of  the  harmony  we  have  assumed  to  underlie 
the  seeming  discord  of  moral  facts.  When  we  note 


538  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

that  the  Eskimo  and  the  Englishman  are  moved  to 
opposite  conduct  by  opposite  conditions  of  wealth ;  that 
these  same  opposite  conditions  produce  in  the  civil- 
ized American  a  moral  nature  which  transcends  the 
highest  conceptions  of  the  Papuan  ;  that  it  is  condi- 
tions of  wealth  which  make  slavery  right  in  one  com- 
munity and  wrong  in  another ;  that  the  moral  notions 
of  the  German  and  of  the  Italian,  of  the  Russian 
and  the  Arab,  the  Hindoo  and  the  Chinese,  the  Mon- 
butu  and  the  Malay,  are  all  of  them  determined  by 
the  economic  state  in  which  these  peoples  live,  we 
can  scarcely  deny  that  the  conduct  of  the  bee,  in  so 
far  as  it  appears  to  be  moral  at  all,  is  produced  by  a 
similar  cause.  Why  should  we  deny  it,  when  we  dis- 
cover that  in  some  societies  of  bees  there  is  perfect 
freedom  and  perfect  equality  of  wealth  for  all,  while 
in  others  there  is  slavery  ? 

There  is  yet  another  order  of  moral  facts  of  a  seem- 
ingly more  profound  obscurity  than  are  those  we  have 
just  examined.  The  facts  we  have  in  mind  are  highly 
irregular  in  their  sequences  ;  indeed  they  seem  to  have 
no  sequence  whatever.  They  appear  to  be  indepen- 
dent of  time,  place,  religion,  wealth,  custom,  education, 
political  systems,  economic  life,  and  social  traditions. 
In  a  word  they  seem  to  spring  out  of  some  inborn 
force  in  human  nature  which  defies  analysis.  These 
facts  are  the  moral  values  attached  by  society  to 
matters  concerning  chastity  and  marriage. 

When  we  face  these  things,  with  a  view  to  finding 
a  cause  for  them,  we  seem  to  have  really  trespassed 
on  the  confines  of  a  region  with  which  we  are  wholly 
unfamiliar.  There  appear  to  lie  inherent  in  the  minds 
of  human  beings  certain  inalienable  feelings  concern- 


xii  MORAL  EQUILIBRIUM  AND  CONCLUSION         539 

ing  the  Tightness  and  wrongness  of  sex-relations  over 
which  mere  circumstances  of  wealth  seem  to  have  no 
influence  whatever.  The  relations  between  the  sexes 
are  essentially  moral,  if  we  can  apply  that  adjective 
to  conduct  of  any  kind.  So  profound  is  this  truth 
that  the  meaning  of  the  word  "moral"  in  popular 
usage  is  almost  altogether  confined  to  matters  of  this 
peculiar  character. 

We  may  add  that  these  moral  feelings  are  not  quite 
the  sole  possession  of  the  human  genus.  They  are 
observed  also  in  many  of  the  lower  animals,  though 
in  less  degree.  Some  species  of  mammals,  other  than 
man,  disclose  the  passion  of  jealousy ;  and  this  pas- 
sion is  possessed  in  high  degree  by  birds.  Topinard 
remarks  that  conjugal  fidelity  is  found  nowhere  so 
delicately  appreciated  as  among  birds;  whereas  the 
lion,  if  we  exempt  some  slight  deviations  from  the 
pathway  of  positive  rectitude,  is  an  exemplary  and 
solicitous  husband  and  father. 

How  can  we  explain  these  very  obscure  facts  ? 
How  reduce  these  profoundly  erratic  phenomena  of 
moral  character  to  that  harmonious  proportion  we 
seek  as  the  basis  of  universal  existence  and  action  ? 

It  would  appear  that  the  extraordinary  and  highly 
irregular  nature  of  these  moral  phenomena  should 
warn  us  that  the  harmony  underlying  them  is  not 
to  be  sought  for  upon  their  surface.  The  very  pro- 
fundity of  their  obscurity  should  invite  us  to  examine 
all  the  more  deeply  into  the  most  remote  places  for 
their  cause ;  and  we  are  convinced  that  by  this  method 
we  will  lay  bare  the  highest  source  of  the  phenomena 
themselves.  To  do  this  we  must  go  some  distance 
from  the  main  road  of  our  inquiry. 


540  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

Among  living  things,  whether  plant  or  animal, 
competition,  of  one  kind  or  another,  is  the  determi- 
nant of  survival.  Every  organism,  when  surrounded 
by  a  plentiful  supply  of  food,  will  absorb  all  the  nour- 
ishment needed  for  the  amplest  possible  life.  More 
than  this  it  cannot  do ;  and  less  it  cannot  do,  if  it  be 
not  disturbed  by  competition  with  other  organisms 
among  which  the  food  is  to  be  divided. 

What  is  true  of  nutrition  is  true  also  of  propaga- 
tion. The  two  functions  are  only  two  imaginary 
aspects  of  one  continuous  natural  process  of  growth. 
Organisms  multiply  as  rapidly  as  they  can.  But 
they  do  more  than  this.  They  tend  to  multiply 
more  rapidly  than  is  possible,  just  as  they  tend  to 
absorb  more  nutriment  than  their  natural  apparatus 
can  assimilate.  If  no  force  intervenes  to  prevent  it, 
plant  and  animal  will  exercise  the  function  of  propa- 
gation to  its  highest  possible  capacity.  Organisms 
which  fail  in  the  competition  for  food  —  whether  the 
competition  be  active  or  passive  —  are  eliminated; 
those  which  succeed  survive.  Likewise,  organisms 
which  fail  in  the  competition  for  propagation  are  elim- 
inated. Those  best  fitted  — through  some  character  of 
an  active  kind  in  themselves,  or  through  circumstances 
—  to  bring  the  propagative  cells  into  contact  are  the 
ones  selected  for  survival  and  remain  as  fixed  types. 

As  we  ascend  in  the  life  scale,  we  find  that  the 
higher  we  go  the  better  fitted  is  the  organism  to 
master  the  needs  of  survival ;  that  is  to  say,  the 
highest  organisms  are  those  which  are  least  suscep- 
tible to  elimination  from  the  forces  of  competition. 
We  find  that  some  of  the  higher  animals  are  favored 
with  characters  giving  them  unusual  safeguards  from 


xii  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND   CONCLUSION         541 

starvation.  These  higher  animals  have  a  psychic  as 
well  as  a  physical  capacity  for  food.  They  can  lay 
up  stores  of  food  and  leave  them  untouched  for  future 
consumption.  This  psychic  safeguard  from  elimina- 
tion is  produced  by  residence  in  a  fixed  place,  and  it 
marks  off  a  wide  gap  between  animals  which  have  it 
and  those  which  have  it  not. 

But  in  addition  to  this  psychic  capacity  for  food  — 
the  means  of  life  —  some  of  the  higher  animals  possess 
a  similar  psychic  capacity  for  the  means  of  propaga- 
tion —  that  is,  for  members  of  the  opposite  sex.  With 
many  of  the  higher  species,  —  with  most  of  them, 
indeed, —  the  members  of  one  sex  compete  for  the 
possession  of  individuals  of  the  other  sex.  This  com- 
petition, too,  may  be  active  or  passive.  Most  animals 
are  ordinarily  satisfied  with  temporary  gratification 
of  hunger.  But  some  of  the  higher  animals  are  ex- 
ceptions to  this  rule.  These  have  a  psychic  desire  — 
a  desire  remaining  after  the  motive  to  propagate  has 
been,  for  the  moment,  removed. 

Among  living  things  man  has  the  most  complex 
brain,  and  hence  his  habitats  are  more  permanently 
fixed,  and  his  wealth  more  varied,  than  those  of  any 
other  animal.  His  mental  desires  for  wealth,  not 
immediately  used,  are  therefore  the  greatest  among 
living  creatures.  And  what  is  true  of  him  concern- 
ing the  means  of  life  is  likewise  true  of  him  concern- 
ing his  means  of  propagation.  The  desire  of  man 
for  the  possession  of  a  mate,  or  a  number  of  mates, 
is  larger  in  quantity  and  more  intricate  in  kind  than 
that  of  any  other  living  thing. 

This  fact,  we  are  persuaded,  will  account  for  all 
the  varied  moral  ideas  of  man  with  regard  to  chastity 


542  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

and  to  marriage.  His  capacity  for  possession  of  the 
means  whereby  he  propagates  is  subject  to  the  same 
law  of  increase  as  that  which  rules  his  capacity  for 
wealth.  It  may  be  extended  ad  infinitum  so  as  to 
include  every  member  of  the  opposite  sex ;  and  in 
this  indefinite  extension  of  psychic  desire  —  of  a  desire 
which,  in  its  very  nature,  can  never  be  satisfied  —  is 
found  the  analysis  which  probably  explains  that  very 
mysterious  phenomenon  called  "  Love." 

Man,  like  other  living  things,  will  not  share  with 
others  the  wealth  that  is  absolutely  necessary  for 
his  own  bare  existence.  And  he  shrinks  from  a 
similar  partition  of  the  means  whereby  he  repro- 
duces his  kind.  If  his  desire  to  propagate  were 
limited  to  mere  physical  capacity, —  as  is  the  case 
with  most  other  animals,  —  he  would  have  no  moral 
ideas  concerning  sex  than  have  these  others.  But 
the  desire  is  not  only  physical  —  it  is  mental,  too ; 
and  inasmuch  as  other  animals  exhibit  moral  notions 
concerning  chastity,  we  are  warranted  in  attributing 
the  similar  fact  to  a  similar  cause. 

Given  the  basic  cause  of  the  phenomena,  we  see 
that  some  of  the  obscurity  in  which  they  have  lain 
is  cleared  up.  If  we  now  regard  the  matter  from  the 
view-point  of  circumstantial  wealth,  the  last  of  the 
obscurity  will,  we  are  persuaded,  in  turn  disappear. 

Some  men  have  more  intricate  ideas  of  chastity 
than  others.  But  the  complexity  will  be  found  to  be 
measurable  by  the  complexity  of  the  environment. 
Civilized  groups  always  have  higher  notions  of  chas- 
tity than  savage  ones.  Civilized  communities  are 
almost  always  monogamous ;  savage  ones  are  almost 
always  polygamous.  But  civilization  is  very  largely 


xii  MORAL  EQUILIBRIUM  AND  CONCLUSION         543 

a  matter  of  wealth  and  its  variety  and  diffusion. 
With  savages  women  are  the  mere  slaves  or  instru- 
ments of  men.  The  boast  of  Christian  civilization 
that  it  is  its  religion  which  gives  woman  her  high 
place  is  wholly  gratuitous. 

It  is  somewhat  difficult  to  understand  why  Chris- 
tian ethics  should  be  considered  the  cause  of  woman's 
emancipation,  when  we  know  that  for  more  than  fif- 
teen centuries  woman  was  the  mere  chattel  of  her 
husband  in  Christian  Europe.  To  those  who  contend 
that  she  was  anything  more  we  would  commend  a 
careful  consideration  of  the  garde  de  chastett —  a 
practice  the  bare  mention  of  which  is  enough  to 
stupefy  the  minds  of  moral  men  and  women  of  to-day. 
Why  did  the  gentlemen  of  mediaeval  Europe  enforce 
this  unspeakably  abominable  practice  upon  the  wives 
of  their  bosoms  ?  Shall  we  say  it  was  because  of 
Christian  ethics  ?  Because  the  Gospels  had  been 
proclaimed  in  Europe  for  a  thousand  years  ?  or  shall 
we  take  the  more  rational  ground  that  it  was  because 
Christian  ethics  had  no  effect  whatever  upon  the  con- 
dition of  woman  ? 

But  if  you  say  that  Christian  Europe  at  that  age 
did  not  understand  Christian  ethics,  whereas  we  now 
do  understand  it,  let  us  ask  the  cause  of  this  highly 
remarkable  fact.  Why  do  men  of  the  present  age 
comprehend  the  ethics  of  Jesus  so  much  more  clearly 
than  did  their  ancestors  ?  Surely  not  because  the 
Gospels  are  preached  louder  or  more  constantly 
to-day  than  they  were  in  the  Middle  Ages.  They 
are  not.  There  is  a  thousand  times  more  unbelief 
and  a  thousand  times  less  preaching  in  Europe  now 
than  there  was  then. 


544  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

But  such  discussion  as  this  is  idle.  Europe  is 
somewhat  differently  situated  to-day  in  the  matter  of 
wealth  than  it  was  a  few  or  many  centuries  ago. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  it  is  Christian  ethics  that  has 
emancipated  modern  woman,  what  was  it  that  emanci- 
pated the  women  of  ancient  Rome  ?  The  Roman 
matron  and  maid  were  as  solicitous  of  their  chastity 
as  was  ever  a  Christian  woman  now  or  in  times  past. 
They  were  just  as  free,  just  as  much  loved,  just  as 
much  the  object  of  veneration  and  of  sanctified 
regard  as  are  the  women  of  America  to-day.  That 
is,  among  the  Romans  who  were  rich  and  free.  And 
if  woman,  in  general,  is  held  in  higher  esteem  in 
America  and  England  than  was  woman  in  ancient 
Rome,  may  the  fact  not  be  due  to  the  difference  of 
the  economic  life  of  these  peoples  ? 

As  woman  becomes  more  free  in  the  use  and  owner- 
ship of  wealth,  her  freedom  in  selecting  her  mate  is 
greater.  She  has  never  been  without  the  desire  of 
exclusive  ownership  of  all  the  affections  of  her  hus- 
band. Her  mental  capacity  in  that  respect  has 
always  been  equal  to  that  of  the  man.  In  the  moral 
estimation  of  woman,  whether  she  be  slave  or  free, 
polygamy  has  been  always  wrong.  But  her  desires 
have  not  always  been  consulted.  Her  capacity  for 
exclusive  possession  has  not  been  left  perfectly  free 
to  act.  Her  freedom  in  this  respect  is  enlarging, 
truly,  but  this  fact  is  the  result  of  the  larger  economic 
liberties  she  is  rapidly  acquiring.  It  needs  no  argu- 
ment to  establish  the  truth  of  the  simple  fact  that  if 
a  woman  be  rich  she  will  have  a  wider  choice  of 
mates  than  if  she  is  forced  to  rely  upon  the  labor 
of  a  man  for  her  livelihood. 


XII  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND   CONCLUSION         545 

In  a  wealthy  community  women  can  enforce  a 
monogamous  method  of  life  with  comparative  success. 
A  wealthy  community  can  support  a  system  of  gen- 
eral and  free  education  with  little  distress  to  the 
body  social.  And  the  community  will  soon  learn  the 
wisdom  of  public  education  once  the  method  is  tried. 
The  intelligent  man,  of  necessity,  makes  a  more  use- 
ful citizen  than  the  ignorant  man.  And  with  equal 
advantages  for  both  sexes,  the  resultant  effects  upon 
the  economic  life  of  the  people  must  be  profound  and 
far-reaching.  But  the  wealth  which  confers  social 
freedom  upon  women  likewise  stimulates  the  mental 
energy  of  men.  And  as  capacity  for  propagation  is 
limited  by  intelligence,  the  more  cultured  man  has  a 
smaller  functional  capacity  in  this  respect  than  has 
the  less  cultured  one,  and  hence  a  smaller  mental 
capacity.  If  his  normal  desires  are  satisfied  with  one 
mate,  his  mental  desires  are  satisfied  with  the  same 
number.  He  will  desire  no  more  than  one;  but  the 
idea  of  sharing  that  one  with  others  will  be  as  repug- 
nant to  his  mind  as  the  idea  of  sharing  food  all  of 
which  is  necessary  for  bare  existence  of  self.  In 
a  social  group  wherein  these  circumstances  similarly 
affect  the  majority  polygamy  will  be  immoral. 

Ability  to  keep  more  than  one  mate  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  matter,  much  as  this  notion  is  harped 
upon.  In  a  community  like  England  or  the  United 
States  vast  numbers  of  men  are  rich  enough  to  main- 
tain large  harems.  They  are  forbidden  to  do  so  by 
law,  but  they  do  not  refrain  because  of  this  fact. 
They  approve  the  law  and  would  be  the  first  to 
oppose  its  abrogation.  It  is  true,  of  course,  that 
most  men  in  polygamous  countries  keep  but  one 


546  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

wife  ;  but  they  do  not  condemn  polygamy,  because 
with  them  woman  is  the  slave  of  man.  Many  of 
those  who  practise  it  do  so  only  because  the  social 
code  approves  the  custom  ;  in  the  harem  there  is 
always  a  favorite  wife. 

In  all  civilized  communities  illegal,  or  immoral, 
polygamy  exists  ;  but  those  who  indulge  the  practice 
are  condemned  by  the  social  code.  The  practice  is 
called  "  the  social  evil,"  and  is  regarded  as  the  most 
painful  and  distressing  phenomenon  of  civilized  life. 
This  kind  of  polygamy  tends  to  disappear  as  woman 
becomes  economically  free.  The  number  of  women 
who  resort  to  that  method  of  gaining  a  means  of  ex- 
istence is  insignificant  when  compared  with  the  num- 
ber who  engage  in  other  pursuits.  The  method,  too, 
is  highly  repugnant  to  those  who  use  it.  If  honorable 
occupation  were  open  to  all  women,  —  occupation 
which  would  be  liberally  remunerative,  —  there  would 
be  no  "  social  evil."  No  woman  will  deliberately 
choose  a  profession  which  excludes  her  from  associa- 
tion with  her  family,  and  society  in  general,  when  she 
is  given  an  opportunity  of  earning  a  higher,  or  an 
equal,  wage  in  an  honorable  way  of  life.  This  will  be 
admitted  by  all.  The  professional  courtesan  is  only 
an  exaggerated  example  of  the  economic  marriage. 
The  only  difference  between  her  and  the  woman  who 
marries,  in  a  legal  way,  for  convenience  lies  in  the 
fact  that  the  courtesan  is  the  instrument  of  many 
men,  while  the  economic  wife  is  the  instrument  of 
only  one.  And  in  many  instances  the  courtesan  has 
the  happier  existence,  if  we  eliminate  her  social  dis- 
advantages. The  so-called  "  social  evil "  is  a  question 
of  pure  economy.  If  the  source  of  it  be  removed,  the 
institution  will  disappear. 


xii  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND   CONCLUSION         547 

Polygamy  is  thus  seen  to  be  attacked  by  two  power- 
ful social  forces  —  a  moral  force  in  woman,  and  a 
psycho-physical  force  in  man,  which,  itself,  terminates 
in  morality.  Promiscuity  is  intensely  repugnant  to 
civilized  men  and  women  both.  It  is  detested  by  men 
when  women  practise  it  ;  and  detested  by  women 
when  it  is  practised  by  men.  This  detestation  is  as 
purely  moral  as  is  man's  repugnance  to  murder ;  and 
it  is  moral  for  the  same  reason. 

In  some  civilized  groups,  ancient  and  modern,  as  the 
Egyptians,  the  Hindoos,  the  Jews,  polygamy  has  been 
approved  when  one  wife  has  failed  to  produce  chil- 
dren. Husbands  and  wives  have  approved  it  then. 
But  this  custom  is  still  in  force  in  almost  every  Chris- 
tian country.  Incapacity  to  produce  offspring  is 
everywhere  in  the  American  republic  a  legal  cause 
for  divorce ;  and  divorce,  with  remarriage,  is  polyg- 
amy, or  polyandry,  of  a  kind.  Yet  so  detestable  is 
promiscuity  to  the  majority  of  civilized  people  that 
divorces  are  seldom  obtained  because  of  the  incapac- 
ity mentioned.  Divorce  for  other  reasons  is  a  grow- 
ing custom,  and  is  most  practised  in  the  United 
States,  where  woman  is  most  nearly  the  economic 
equal  of  man. 

This  apparent  lack  of  morality  is  compensated  by  the 
fact  that  second  marriages  are  almost  always  happy 
ones.  The  chief  cause  of  unhappy  domestic  life  is  the 
economic  bondage  of  the  female.  Women,  for  con- 
venience, are  compelled  to  marry  men  for  whom  they 
have  no  sexual  regard  whatever  ;  and  this,  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  the  men  may  have  highly  undesirable 
habits.  After  marriage  the  sexual  apathy  of  the  wife 
turns  to  antipathy  upon  closer  acquaintance  with  the 


548  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL   MOTION  CHAP. 

undesirable  habits  of  the  husband.  The  woman  who 
loves  a  blackguard  spouse  seldom  seeks  a  divorce. 
His  value  as  a  spouse  is  higher  than  his  value  as  a 
companion.  But  when  no  such  spouse-value  exists,  — 
when,  in  fact,  there  is  marital  hate  rather  than  love, 
—  the  motive  for  separation  has  a  twofold  strength. 

The  comparatively  poor  classes  practise  divorce  in 
proportionally  greater  numbers  than  the  wealthier 
classes.  This  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  rich  woman 
is  almost  always  the  selector.  Marriages  in  which 
wealth  plays  no  part  at  all  are  proverbially  happy  ones. 

In  ancient  and  less  civilized  groups  the  man  di- 
vorces the  woman — another  purely  economical  fact. 
In  modern  civilized  groups  the  initiative  is  equal  for 
both  sexes.  There  is  thus  a  double  incentive  to 
escape  from  a  painful  environment.  The  number 
of  divorces  must  decrease  as  women  are  left  more 
free  in  their  choice,  and  as  intellect  becomes  more 
generally  appreciated  as  an  attraction  in  the  mate  to 
be  selected.  In  America,  divorce  is  freely  resorted 
to  because  the  social  code  freely  permits  the  unhappy 
spouse  to  seek  relief.  The  social  code  of  Europe 
frowns  upon  the  custom.1 

1The  economic,  political,  and  moral  state  of  France  presents  an  in- 
teresting study  as  regarded  in  the  light  of  the  theory  of  capitalization 
developed  in  this  book.  The  reader  will  have  observed  that  we  have 
written  of  France  as  being  less  developed  than  is  England.  Some  facts 
are  in  harmony  with  this  assumption,  others  are  in  contradiction  with 
it.  The  principal  fact  which  seems  to  favor  the  supposition  that 
France  is  really  in  advance  of  England  is  the  greater  number  of  French 
divorces  —  a  number  which  is  rapidly  increasing.  But  the  view  that 
England  is  far  the  more  advanced  group  is  favored  by  more  numerous 
facts.  If  the  diffusion  of  wealth  in  land  in  France  is  greater  than  in 
England,  we  must  consider  that  the  wages  of  the  English  proletary  are 
higher  than  those  of  the  French.  A  result  of  this  is  the  abstinence 


xii  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND   CONCLUSION         549 

We  have  now  considered  all  the  moral  ideas  of 
men,  so  far  as  morality  is  concerned  with  life  and 
property.  We  believe  that  the  discussion  has  materi- 
ally cleared  up  much  of  the  obscurity  in  which  these 

from  marriage  of  the  French  peasant,  which  would  account  for  the 
stationary  state  of  the  population,  and  for  the  vastly  higher  rate  of 
illegitimacy.  Again,  the  question  of  the  French  tariffs  complicates  the 
question  of  wages  ;  for  France,  unlike  the  United  States,  can  be  com- 
pared with  England  in  this  respect.  Then  the  character  of  French 
industry  is  highly  agricultural  while  that  of  England  is  almost  exclu- 
sively manufacturing.  And  we  have  seen  that  the  manufacturing  com- 
munity has  the  advantage  in  wealth.  French  methods  of  legal 
procedure  are  proverbially  less  enlightened  than  are  those  of  England. 
The  community  is  more  militant  in  spite  of  its  republican  form  of  gov- 
ernment. Its  industrial  monopolies  resemble  those  of  ancient  Rome, 
more  than  they  resemble  those  of  New  Zealand  ;  whereas  the  govern- 
ment monopolies  (local  principally)  in  England  are  of  distinctly 
modern  character. 

The  difficulty,  perhaps,  may  be  made  less  formidable  if  we  consider 
that  in  France  there  are  really  two  social  groups  instead  of  one.  Paris 
is  very  different  in  its  social  characters  from  the  rest  of  France.  Pari- 
sians practise  divorce  more  freely  than  do  the  provincials.  This  fact 
seems  to  be  outweighed  by  the  counter  fact  that  the  percentage  of 
illegitimate  births  in  Paris  is  three  times  as  great  as  the  highest  rate 
elsewhere  in  France.  How  can  we  reconcile  this  apparent  irregular- 
ity ?  I  confess  I  do  not  clearly  see  a  perfectly  satisfactory  answer. 
To  say  that  France  presents  us  with  a  social  growth  of  an  abnormal 
kind  is  only  restating  the  problem.  We  should  find  wherein  the  abnor- 
mality exists  and  why.  But  such  exceptions  to  general  laws  are  not 
peculiar  to  society.  They  exist  in  the  phenomena  of  the  universe  at 
large,  as  for  example  in  dermoid  cysts,  in  hexadactylous  men,  in  the 
planetoids,  the  retrograde  motion  of  one  of  Saturn's  satellites,  and 
other  extrusive  natural  phenomena.  It  is  difficult  to  understand  an 
increasing  number  of  divorces  accompanied  by  an  abnormal  number 
of  illegitimate  births  when  the  theory  would  seem  to  indicate  that  as 
divorce  increases  illegitimacy  declines.  In  the  United  States,  for  ex- 
ample, where  divorce  is  most  practised,  to  be  of  illegitimate  birth  is  a 
more  painful  social  stigma  than  to  be  a  thief.  This  moral  fact  is  in 
perfect  harmony  with  our  theory  of  capitalization. 


550  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

ideas  have  been  plunged.  Our  method  has  been 
simple  enough.  All  we  have  done  is  to  look  at  moral 
phenomena  in  the  light  of  wealth  and  its  diffusion. 
But  there  is  still  another  order  of  moral  facts  upon 
which  we  have  not  touched.  These  still  seem  to 
elude  the  method. 

What  shall  we  say  of  those  moral  notions  of  men 
concerning  religious  conduct  ?  Religious  conduct  is 
no  less  a  matter  of  morals  than  is  conduct  concern- 
ing life  and  property.  Some  men  deem  it  highly 
wrong  to  disbelieve  in  certain  theological  creeds. 
It  is  positively  iniquitous,  according  to  many,  to  deny 
the  truth  of  certain  dogmas  of  religious  faith.  Men 
are  severely  punished,  socially,  if  not  legally,  when 
they  speak  with  contempt  of  popular  gods,  or  when 
they  refuse  to  conform  with  popular  religious  cus- 
toms. Here,  too,  we  find  a  great  want  of  regularity 
in  the  phenomena.  That  which  is  right  in  a  religious 
way  in  New  York  is  wrong  in  Constantinople.  What 
is  virtuous  in  Rome  is  vicious  in  St.  Petersburg ; 
what  is  admirable  in  Pekin  or  Calcutta  is  abominable 
in  London  and  Paris.  Again,  different  individuals  and 
different  classes  in  the  same  community,  are  at  war  in 
their  moral  opinions  concerning  religious  conduct  itself. 

We  have  seen  that  religious  beliefs  have  no  bear- 
ing on  moral  opinions  concerning  life  and  property. 
Let  us  inquire  if  the  reverse  of  this  fact  be  the  truth. 
Let  us  ask  whether  moral  opinions  in  the  matter  of 
life  and  wealth  have  any  effect  upon  theological  theory 
and  practice.  We  can  best  accomplish  this  purpose 
by  looking  at  a  few  moral  facts  which  have  a  theologi- 
cal significance. 

The  example  most  readily  suggesting  itself  is  that 


XII  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND   CONCLUSION         551 

found  in  beliefs  concerning  the  earth  and  the  heav- 
enly bodies.  The  human  race  at  all  times  has  enter- 
tained the  most  fanciful,  and  the  most  fallacious, 
notions  about  the  earth  and  the  stars.  Such  notions 
have  been  almost  always  of  a  religious  nature.  Men 
have  always  believed  that  their  gods  have  had  some- 
thing to  do  with  the  creation  and  operation  of  the 
universe.  All  religions  teach  dogmas  of  this  kind, 
and  even  religions  professing  no  god  of  any  kind 
have  their  own  theories  of  creation.  There  is  no 
exception  to  this  rule. 

Not  long  ago  it  was  the  general  belief  in  Europe 
that  the  earth  was  flat,  and  that  it  was  formed  in  six 
days,  and  that  it  was  the  centre  of  the  visible  stellar 
system.  Theologians  interpreted  the  sacred  books 
of  the  Jews  after  this  fashion.  They  believed  also 
that  this  planet  was  only  a  few  thousand  years  old. 
They  believed  that  all  species  of  animals,  man  in- 
cluded, were  created  in  their  present  anatomical 
forms. 

To  deny  the  truth  of  this  interpretation  of  the 
religious  writings  of  the  Jews  was  deemed  a  highly 
immoral  act.  It  was  immoral  to  teach  that  the  earth 
was  round  or  that  the  sun  was  fixed.  The  Bible  had 
asserted  that  the  earth  had  "  foundations,"  and  that 
Joshua  had  bidden  the  sun  stand  still  over  a  certain 
valley  in  Syria.  It  was  immoral  to  assert  that  these 
religious  dogmas  were  false.  Men  were  severely 
punished  and  often  put  to  death  for  publishing  opin- 
ions contrary  to  the  popular  theological  belief  upon 
these  astronomical  matters.  Nor  can  we  say  that 
the  peoples  of  Europe  were  unique  in  this  respect. 
The  religions  of  every  civilized  people,  ancient  and 


552  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

modern,  have  their  own  interpretations  of  the  uni- 
verse, and  to  go  contrary  to  accepted  and  general 
views  has  always  been  deemed  immoral  by  popular 
and  ecclesiastical  judgment.  The  Jews,  the  Assyrians, 
the  Egyptians,  the  Parsees,  the  Greeks,  the  Romans, 
the  Hindoos,  and  the  so-called  Indo-Germanic  peoples, 
all  have  their  own  cosmogony,  and  that  cosmogony 
has  always  been  an  essential  part  of  the  religion  of 
the  masses.  To  express  disbelief  in  any  dogma  of  the 
religion  was  to  attack  the  truth  of  the  religion  itself, 
and  was  hence  wrong-doing.  For  the  sake  of  con- 
venience let  us  confine  ourselves  to  the  religion  of 
Europe,  for  it  is  with  that  religion  and  its  develop- 
ment we  are  most  familiar. 

A  few  centuries  ago  it  was  deemed  perfectly  right 
to  kill  the  man  who  openly  taught  that  the  popular 
belief  about  the  age  and  shape  of  the  earth  was 
untrue.  To-day  every  educated  European  knows 
that  this  planet  is  not  the  centre  of  the  solar  system, 
and  that  it  was  not  formed  in  a  few  hours ;  and  this 
astronomical  doctrine  is  taught  in  every  European 
school.  It  is  no  longer  an  immoral  act  to  assert 
the  truth  of  that  doctrine,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
some  individuals  yet  adhere  to  the  old  interpretation 
of  the  Bible.  It  is  no  longer  heresy  to  hold  that  the 
earth  is  several  millions  of  years  old  instead  of  six 
thousand.  It  is  no  longer  vicious  or  immoral  openly 
to  teach  that  truth.  Why  ? 

The  answer  is  very  simple.  The  religio-moral 
code  of  Europe  has  been  changed  in  this  particular 
matter.  The  religion  of  Europe  no  longer  asserts  that 
the  earth  is  flat  and  that  the  sun  moves  around  it. 
In  other  words,  popular  belief  concerning  astronomi- 


xii  MORAL  EQUILIBRIUM  AND  CONCLUSION         553 

cal  phenomena,  and  their  relations  to  the  deity,  has 
been  profoundly  altered.  If  we  ask,  in  turn,  for  the 
cause  of  this  important  change  in  religious  belief,  we 
need  not  go  far  to  find  it.  The  change  has  been 
wrought  by  the  invention  of  new  kinds  of  wealth,  and 
by  the  application  of  that  wealth  to  purposes  of  gen- 
eral education.  The  wealth  of  Europe  has  multiplied 
in  kind  and  in  quantity.  Its  use  has  been  progres- 
sively extended  to  larger  and  larger  numbers  of  indi- 
viduals. The  truths  which  Kepler  announced  and 
which  Newton  proved  ;  the  truths  discovered  by  the 
telescopes  of  Galilei  and  his  successors  ;  the  truths 
developed  by  the  entire  assemblage  of  astronomical 
instruments  since  the  time  of  these  men,  have  been 
freely  disseminated  by  the  diffusion  of  wealth  among 
the  masses ;  and  if  we  suppose  that  Europe  had  re- 
mained until  now  in  its  feudal  state,  we  cannot  imag- 
ine that  the  people  of  Europe  would  be  much  more 
enlightened  to-day  than  they  were  in  the  time  of 
Copernicus,  whose  theory  of  the  solar  system  was 
universally  condemned  as  heretical  and  immoral. 

Long  before  Copernicus  lived,  there  had  been 
many  a  scientific  heretic  like  him  ;  and  long  before 
the  time  of  Martin  Luther  there  was  many  a  theolog- 
ical heretic  more  radical  than  he.  But  the  names  of 
such  men  are  not  generally  known  because  they  lived 
at  a  time  when  their  ideas  could  not  become  social. 
The  circumstances  of  wealth  in  Europe  had  not  yet 
reduced  the  minds  of  the  people  to  an  average  intelli- 
gence capable  of  perceiving  the  force  of  the  truth  of 
the  heretical  doctrines  taught.  Whether  the  heresy 
was  intellectual  or  moral  made  little  difference.  The 
calculations  of  a  Leverrier  cannot  be  understood  by 


554  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

men  whose  capacity  for  mathematics  is  the  result  of 
study  carried  no  farther  than  an  elementary  arith- 
metic. The  truth  of  Newton's  law  will  not  be  per- 
fectly clear  to  those  who  cannot  understand  calculus ; 
and  those  who  know  nothing  of  geology  may  be  at 
a  loss  to  perceive  the  scientific  impossibility  of  the 
doctrine  that  the  earth  was  formed  in  a  few  days,  and 
that  it  is  only  six  thousand  years  old. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  moral  wisdom  of  the  parable 
of  the  Master's  Vineyard  will  be  somewhat  obscure 
to  those  who  think  it  wrong  to  pay  equal  wages  to 
unequal  workmen.  Those  who  remember  the  parable 
will  recall  that  the  master  of  the  vineyard  made  no 
distinction  between  the  man  who  had  labored  one 
hour  and  the  man  who  had  labored  eleven  hours. 
All  the  laborers  were  paid  the  same  wages  regardless 
of  their  hours  of  toil.  This  apparently  unjust  reward- 
ing of  labor  was  approved  by  Jesus.  The  wealth  of 
the  master  was  his  to  dispose  of  as  he  saw  fit.  But 
the  wisdom  of  that  approval  is  not  clearly  perceived 
by  capitalists  or  laborers.  In  the  present  system  of 
production  the  general  application  of  this  method 
would  prove  the  ruin  of  industry.  For  those  who 
contend  that  competition  is  right,  the  plan  of  wages 
suggested  by  Jesus  in  this  parable  is  immoral  and 
infamous*  It  is  not  only  unjust,  but  cruelly  so.  It 
removes  every  incentive  to  thrift  and  to  industrious- 
ness.  It  strikes  at  the  very  foundation  of  the  competi- 
tive system,  and  seems  to  place  a  premium  on  sloth. 

But  did  Jesus  contemplate  doing  all  this  ?  Hardly. 
The  moral  lesson  of  the  parable  is  perfectly  clear, 
perfectly  wise,  perfectly  just  to  the  minds  of  those 
who  contend  that  the  competitive  system  is  the 


xii  MORAL  EQUILIBRIUM   AND  CONCLUSION         555 

essence  of  wrong.  For  these,  the  parable  has  a 
moral  value  of  the  highest  order.  For  these,  it  con- 
templates a  reconstruction  of  the  entire  system  of 
economic  life.  For  these  it  is  an  admirable  and 
scientific  perception  of  the  total  injustice  of  compe- 
tition ;  and  for  these  it  is  only  an  evidence  of  the 
profound  wisdom  of  the  mind  which  made  it.  Why 
do  many  men  now  so  much  more  clearly  perceive  the 
truth  of  this  seemingly  obscure  lesson  in  economics  ? 
Is  it  not  because  they  have  true  conceptions  of 
morality  as  it  affects  wealth  and  its  division  ?  And 
are  not  these  clearer  perceptions  due  altogether  to 
the  growing  equality  of  men  in  the  matter  of  wealth 
itself?  If  men  are  more  intellectual  to-day  than 
formerly,  it  is  because  their  wealth  is  greater  and 
more  equally  diffused. 

The  mere  repetition  of  a  scientific  truth  or  a  moral 
precept  is  altogether  insufficient  for  a  general  under- 
standing of  the  one  or  a  general  practice  of  the  other. 
The  "  golden  rule  "  had  been  preached  for  centuries 
in  Europe,  yet  that  preaching  had  been  in  vain.  It 
may  be  said  that  it  is  not  practised  now  more  than  it 
ever  was.  This  is  an  error.  That  precept  is  very 
largely  practised  in  some  of  the  relations  of  European 
life,  and  in  these  same  relations  it  is  absolutely  prac- 
tised in  the  United  States.  A  few  centuries  ago 
Europeans  and  Americans  were  burning  one  another 
for  heresy  while  they  were  incessantly  preaching, 
"  Do  unto  others  as  you  would  have  others  do  unto 
you."  The  repetition  of  the  precept  did  not  prevent 
those  who  uttered  it  from  slaying  their  fellow-men  in 
the  name  of  the  precept's  author.  But  to-day  men 
do  not  slay  others  for  heresy.  They  have  learned 


556  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

that  religious  liberty  for  each  can  best  be  served  by 
equal  liberty  for  all.  He  who  would  not  be  slain 
must  perforce  spare  others.  When  men  perceive 
that  if  they  are  to  indulge  their  own  religious  emo- 
tions they  must  allow  to  others  the  same  privilege, 
they  forthwith  begin  the  practice  of  the  "golden 
rule,"  at  least  in  the  matter  of  religious  toleration. 
And  this  whether  they  preach  it  or  not.  In  America 
the  practice  is  perfect ;  for  Americans  levy  no  taxes 
for  religious  purposes,  and  exempt  from  taxation  all 
forms  of  wealth  used  in  religious  worship. 

That  flawless  theorem  of  moral  science  known  as 
the  parable  of  the  Master's  Vineyard  does  not  seem 
as  clear  as  the  "golden  rule,"  when  this  latter  pre- 
cept is  applied  to  religious  toleration.  But  we  cannot 
escape  from  the  conclusion  that,  in  their  moral 
aspects,  religious  equality  and  economic  equality  are 
essentially  the  same.  This  view  is  held  by  the 
Christian  socialists.  They,  manifestly,  can  see  per- 
fect justice  in  the  economic  parables  of  Jesus,  and 
can  understand  also  the  universal  wisdom  of  the 
"golden  rule,"  as  well  as  its  wisdom  when  it  is 
applied  to  religious  liberty.  If  the  majority  of  Chris- 
tians do  not  now  see  this  moral  force  of  the  parable, 
they  do  see  the  force  of  the  "golden  rule"  in  its 
application  to  freedom  of  worship.  Let  somebody 
propose  to  destroy  that  freedom,  and  he  will  soon  see 
how  quickly  the  majority  of  Christians  will  manifest 
a  thorough  appreciation  of  the  force  of  the  command 
of  the  Saviour.  Nor  is  it  difficult  to  conceive  that 
men  are  as  capable  of  perceiving  the  economic  force 
of  the  parable  of  the  vineyard.  What  Jesus  desired 
to  teach  by  that  parable  has  not  always  been  pre- 


xii  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND  CONCLUSION         557 

cisely  understood  by  preachers  of  the  gospel.  Their 
explanations  of  it  have  been  somewhat  lame,  if  no 
worse.  Jesus  certainly  did  not  intend  to  point  out 
a  commonplace  fact.  We  all  know  that  a  man  can 
give  away  his  wealth  to  suit  himself.  But  Jesus  went 
out  of  his  way  to  approve  the  special  manner  in 
which  the  master  paid  his  employees.  Why  should  he 
have  done  this  if  that  method  did  not  commend  itself 
to  his  moral  theory  of  labor  and  capital  ? 

We  will  presently  recur  to  this  subject  and  exam- 
ine more  fully  into  the  nature  of  Christian  ethics. 
We  hope  to  be  able  to  show  that  of  all  moral  teachers 
Jesus  alone  has  left  a  perfectly  scientific  system ;  that 
he  alone  has  understood  the  true  method  of  dealing 
with  moral  facts ;  that  he  alone  saw  with  unclouded 
vision  the  absolute  and  necessary  harmony  underly- 
ing the  profoundly  irregular  manifestations  of  moral 
force ;  and  that  it  was  he  who,  by  some  power  of 
synthesis,  which  has  eluded  ancient  and  modern 
thinkers  alike,  was  able  to  construct  a  theory  of 
moral  life  in  perfect  accord  with  the  general  prin- 
ciples of  modern  scientific  inquiry.  This  we  shall 
undertake  to  do  with  every  assurance  that  our  posi- 
tion will  commend  itself  to  those  who  are  seeking  a 
substantial  basis  on  which  to  build  an  exact  science 
of  ethics.  For  the  present,  let  us  revert  to  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  effects  wrought  upon  religious  conduct 
by  the  economic  forces  of  civilization. 

The  first  of  these  effects  is  the  complete  severance 
of  religious  morality  from  economic  morality.  No 
consideration  of  religious  belief  enters  into  the  judg- 
ment passed  upon  the  economic  conduct  of  men. 
An  individual's  moral  character  in  no  wise  depends 


558  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

upon  his  religious  convictions.  The  individual  may 
have  religious  belief  of  any  kind,  or  no  religious  faith 
at  all.  The  fact  that  a  thief  is  a  monotheist  or  an 
atheist  does  not  excuse  him  or  convict  him.  He  is 
condemned  without  the  slightest  regard  to  his  theo- 
logical beliefs.  He  is  not  asked  whether  he  is  a  Chris- 
tian or  a  pagan.  Moral  judgment  upon  his  conduct  is 
rendered  without  even  an  inquiry  into  his  religious 
state  of  mind.  On  the  other  hand,  the  conduct 
of  the  philanthropist  is  not  judged  by  the  standards 
of  creed.  He  may  adhere  to  one  creed  or  another ; 
he  may  adhere  to  no  creed  at  all.  But  this  fact  does 
not  enter  into  the  moral  judgment  which  pronounces 
him  to  be  a  man  of  singularly  high  character.  There 
is  no  special  religious  belief  regarded  by  everybody 
as  an  essential  qualification  of  good  conduct. 

Nor  can  there  ever  be.  Religious  toleration  is  a 
growing  idea.  It  expands  in  quantity  and  in  kind 
with  the  expansion  of  intelligence  and  sympathy. 
The  most  moral,  as  well  as  the  most  intelligent,  men 
are  now  so  far  from  condemning  others  because  of 
religious  convictions  that  the  practice  of  extreme 
consideration  and  solicitude  for  the  faith  of  one's 
neighbors  is  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  admirable 
of  virtues.  The  good  man  is  he  who,  while  demand- 
ing that  his  own  internal  faith  be  respected,  is  ready 
to  give  as  much  as  he  asks.  If  his  sensibilities  are 
hurt  by  want  of  respect  for  his  religious  faith,  he  does 
not  invite  attack  by  attacking  the  faiths  of  others. 
Every  man  is  open  to  the  conviction  that  he  may  be 
in  error ;  but  conviction  cannot  be  produced  by  de- 
priving the  individual  of  the  very  liberty  essential  to 
the  change  of  mind  desired.  Amity  in  religion  is 


xii  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM    AND   CONCLUSION         559 

therefore  rapidly  displacing  enmity  ;  and  when  amity 
is  found  to  be  the  more  efficient  means  of  propagating 
religious  faith  of  any  kind,  it  becomes  rapidly  and  per- 
manently social.  The  world's  great  religious  debates 
are  now  conducted  with  a  spirit  of  freedom  and  fair- 
ness impossible  so  long  as  the  teachers  of  heresy 
were  publicly  burned  or  banished  by  governments. 
The  death  of  the  "  sinner  "  is  not  so  much  desired  at 
present  as  it  was  in  the  old  days  of  comparative  pov- 
erty and  comparative  ignorance.  Wealth,  which  edu- 
cates the  mind,  improves  the  moral  character  like- 
wise. The  man  who  has  property  that  may  be  stolen 
abhors  the  thief.  He  who  would  be  free  to  convert 
others  to  his  own  religious  faith  can  secure  his  free- 
dom only  when  he  gives  to  others  the  same  liberty 
he  asks  for  himself.  And  if  this  amicable  state  exists 
in  civilized  communities  to-day,  it  is  only  because  men 
have  become  intelligent  and  moral  by  the  use  of 
expanding  wealth. 

Thus  is  established  that  complete  severance  of 
religion  from  morality  which  leaves  men  free  to 
choose  their  creeds  as  long  as  these  creeds  do  not 
interfere  with  life  and  property.  In  other  words,  all 
are  free  to  practise  moral  religion.  But  the  morality 
of  religion  is  not  defined  by  religious  opinion,  but 
by  economic  and  political  opinion.  And  so  we  are 
brought  to  the  conclusion  that  while  religious  codes 
have  no  influence  upon  moral  codes  affecting  wealth 
and  life,  these  latter  codes  have  every  influence  upon 
religious  theory  and  conduct. 

Upon  a  review  of  the  facts  dwelt  upon  in  this 
chapter,  we  are  moved  to  the  conviction  that  moral 
phenomena  form  no  exception  to  the  law  of  harmoni- 


560  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

ous  sequence  assumed  to  underlie  the  phenomena  of 
existence  at  large.  One  after  another  the  apparent 
contradictions  in  the  life  of  man  are  seen  to  disappear 
when  we  apply  to  them  the  touchstone  of  wealth  and 
the  concepts  it  connotes.  Is  it  reasonable  to  assume 
that  by  the  use  of  this  method  we  can  construct  an 
exact  moral  science  ?  By  its  use  can  we  lay  down 
laws  of  conduct  which  shall  have  an  universal  appli- 
cation —  laws  by  which  we  can  arrive  at  perfect  judg- 
ments of  moral  values,  and  positively  determine  how  far 
conduct  may  be  correctly  adjudged  to  be  right  or  wrong  ? 

We  are  convinced  that  all  who  have  understood 
our  theory  of  capitalization  will  answer  the  question 
in  the  affirmative.  A  perfect  moral  science  should 
be  able  to  predict  the  conduct  of  men  from  day  to 
day  and  from  hour  to  hour.  Given  the  circumstances, 
and  it  should  be  capable  of  foretelling  precisely  how 
the  body  social  will  act.  This  is  done  in  the  physical 
sciences.  Place  in  the  hands  of  the  mathematician 
the  mass  and  distance  of  bodies  in  space,  and  he  is 
able  to  calculate  the  speed  and  direction  of  their 
motion.  The  chemist  knows  how  certain  elements 
will  combine  when  brought  together  under  certain 
conditions.  The  physiologist  can  predict  the  con- 
duct of  the  bodily  organs  when  he  is  told  the  nature 
of  the  circumstances  applied  to  them.  Is  this,  in  a 
measure,  true  of  the  moral  actions  of  men  ?  There 
need  be  no  doubt  of  it. 

There  is  no  uncertainty  how  Americans  would 
act  were  an  attempt  made  to  tax  the  people  for  the 
support  of  a  state  church,  to  create  an  order  of  nobil- 
ity, to  reestablish  chattel  slavery  by  act  of  Congress, 
to  permit  private  coinage,  to  replace  representative 


XII  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND   CONCLUSION         561 

government  with  an  absolute  monarchy,  or  to  abolish 
public  education.  Moral  science,  such  as  we  have 
now,  although  not  known  by  that  name,  can  foretell 
the  result  of  any  such  attempt  with  as  nice  precision 
as  the  astronomer  can  predict  the  transit  of  a  planet 
across  the  face  of  the  sun.  Why  ?  Because  in  the 
American  republic  there  is  perfect  equality  for  all 
the  people  in  the  institutions  proposed  for  abolition. 

An  attempt  to  overthrow  any  of  these  institutions 
would  arouse  every  individual  to  prompt  and  decisive 
action.  As  all  are  perfectly  equal  in  the  privileges 
proposed  for  abrogation,  all  would  be  stimulated  alike. 
Every  individual  would  think  and  act  like  every  other 
of  his  fellows.  Equal  stimuli  would  produce  equal 
action  in  all.  All  would  agree  that  the  proposed 
reforms  would  be  wrong.  Moral  opinion  would  be 
continuous  and  homogeneous  throughout  the  entire 
assemblage  of  the  popular  mind.  This  is  true  because 
the  political  and  religious  liberty  of  the  people  is 
very  nearly  ideal. 

Why  is  it  that  we  cannot  make  similarly  accurate 
predictions  about  the  conduct  of  the  people  in  matters 
economic  ?  Why  cannot  we  foretell  the  result  of  an 
election  the  issue  of  which  is  concerned  with  the  cur- 
rency or  with  free  trade  ?  Simply  because  the  state 
of  the  American  people  is  far  from  that  economic  ideal 
of  society  in  which  all  are  perfectly  equal  in  wealth. 
If,  in  dealing  with  economic  questions  of  right  and 
wrong,  we  replace  the  present  state  with  a  conception 
of  a  state  of  perfect  equality,  we  will  find  that  predic- 
tion becomes  easy  and  sure ;  quite  as  easy  as  predic- 
tion dealing  with  purely  political  reforms.  When 
the  mathematician  sets  to  work  to  solve  a  problem 


562  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

he  uses  ideal  instruments  of  thought.  The  geometer 
uses  only  ideally  perfect  lines,  volumes,  and  surfaces. 
The  pathologist  uses  ideally  perfect  organs  with  which 
he  compares  diseased  ones.  He  has  before  him  as 
his  standard  a  perfect  man.  He  can  have  no  other 
and  be  sure  of  his  science. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  moral  scientist.  The  stand- 
ard by  which  he  judges  all  human  conduct  must  be 
an  ideal  one ;  and  when  we  look  into  the  moral  pre- 
cepts of  Jesus,  with  this  fact  in  mind,  almost  every 
one  of  his  maxims  becomes  luminous  and  clear. 
Almost  all  of  the  economic  precepts  of  Jesus  imply 
an  ideal  state  of  equality  in  wealth.  Take  from  Jesus 
this  perfect  standard  of  equality,  arid  his  precepts 
become  obscure  or  meaningless.  Give  it  to  him,  and 
his  ethics  is  scientific  in  the  highest  degree.  In  a 
society  where  every  individual  would  be  the  economic 
equal  of  all  the  others,  the  economic  precepts  of  Jesus 
would  act  of  their  own  force.  In  a  society  with  a 
competitive  system  those  precepts  seem  inconceiv- 
able and  vicious. 

How  can  we  conceive  of  a  man  practising  the 
"  golden  rule  "  while  he  remains  a  thief  ?  How  can  we 
conceive  of  a  capitalist  paying  equal  wages  to  unequal 
workmen  when  such  wages  would  mean  the  death  of 
industry  ?  But  if  we  supply  these  conceptions  with 
that  of  a  perfectly  equilibrated  social  body,  we  cannot 
conceive  of  a  man  who  would  not  be  the  very  exem- 
plar of  the  precepts  and  parables  of  the  redeemer. 
Many  of  the  moral  theorems  of  Jesus  are  as  purely 
scientific  as  any  proposition  of  Euclid.  Some  few 
of  his  theorems  we  cannot  perceive  so  clearly ;  but 
we  are  justified  in  withholding  judgment  as  to  the 


xii  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND   CONCLUSION         563 

scientific  value  of  the  now  cloudy  theorems  when 
many  which  were  cloudy  before  are  now  clear 
enough. 

The  attitude  of  scientific  men  toward  the  ethics  of 
the  great  moral  prophet  is  strangely  inconsistent  with 
their  avowed  method.  Let  us  suppose  that  Euclid 
had  left  a  proposition  of  which  there  remained  pre- 
served but  half  the  proof.  Would  it  be  scientific  or 
otherwise  to  reject  the  possibility  of  its  proof  because 
the  whole  proof  was  not  at  once  apparent  ?  Would 
not  mathematicians  devote  hours  and  years  to  the 
attempt  to  carry  out  the  reasoning  of  the  theorem  ? 
Yet  such  men  as  have  tried  to  construct  a  science  of 
morals  have  paid  no  attention  to  the  moral  theorems 
of  Jesus.  Some  of  these  precepts  are  now  perfectly 
clear  —  such  as  that  implied  in  the  parable  of  the 
vineyard  and  the  "golden  rule."  But  if  one  or  two  or 
several  of  his  theorems  are  now  seen  to  be  perfectly 
lucid  and  perfectly  true,  why  reject  all  the  others  as 
being  scientifically  impossible  ?  Why  say  that  the 
sermon  on  the  mount  is  a  satire  when  the  "golden 
rule "  is  practised  of  its  own  force  in  the  United 
States  ? 

To  give  your  cloak  when  sued  at  law  for  your  coat ; 
to  love  your  neighbor  as  you  love  yourself ;  to  turn 
the  other  cheek  when  smitten  upon  the  one ;  these 
things  now  seem  as  scientifically  impossible  as  did 
the  "  golden  rule  "  to  the  moralist  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
That  moralist  could  not  understand  the  economic 
principle  of  the  "  golden  rule  "  when  it  was  applied  to 
religious  liberty.  But  Americans  need  no  exegetist 
to  point  it  out  to  them.  It  acts  of  its  own  force.  We 
do  not  clearly  perceive  the  principle  involved  in  turn- 


564  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

ing  the  other  cheek ;  but  in  view  of  what  we  have 
seen  of  the  "  golden  rule,"  would  it  not  be  wise  to 
defer  judgment  for  a  time  ? 

"  The  Father  which  is  in  Heaven  "  may  seem  to 
some  to  be  the  pure  delusion  of  a  moral  fanatic.  Is 
it  wise  to  dispose  of  it  in  this  manner  when  we  con- 
sider the  other  maxims  of  Jesus  ?  Is  it  not  prudent 
to  wait,  lest  perchance  it  should  turn  out  that  under 
cover  of  Oriental  imagery  may  be  found  a  luminous 
and  noble  axiom  of  moral  truth  ?  He  who  two  thou- 
sand years  ago  could  conceive  of  a  social  state  in 
which  the  "golden  rule"  would  be  mechanically  nec- 
essary at  least  deserves  some  especial  consideration  at 
the  hands  of  moral  science.  We  do  not  say  this  in 
irony.  We  say  it  as  sober  fact.  And  that  moralist 
who  could  illustrate  his  principle  with  such  perfect 
and  detailed  examples  as  the  Master's  Vineyard,  the 
Lost  Sheep,  and  the  Prodigal  Son,  was  a  thinker  in 
economics  who,  if  he  did  not  discuss  Free  Trade,  at 
least  was  aware  of  the  principle  of  socialized  produc- 
tion and  its  effect  upon  the  moral  ideas  of  men. 

To  say  that  some  of  the  maxims  of  Jesus  were 
taught  by  other  ancient  moralists  does  not  prove  that 
Jesus  was  a  fanatic.  It  proves  the  reverse.  It  proves 
that  other  great  minds  had  conceptions  somewhat 
similar.  We  do  not  discredit  Copernicus  or  Kepler 
because  the  Pythagoreans  taught  that  the  planets  re- 
volved around  the  sun.  Nor  do  we  discredit  Coper- 
nicus because  Francis  Bacon,  and  other  eminent 
philosophers  of  his  time,  rejected  the  Copernican 
theory  as  being  disproved  by  the  daily  evidence  of 
the  senses.  All  we  can  say  is  that,  in  the  light  of 
our  larger  knowledge,  Copernicus  was  right.  And 


xii  MORAL  EQUILIBRIUM  AND  CONCLUSION         565 

those  who  to-day  reject  the  Christian  ethics  because 
the  experience  of  men  is  in  daily  conflict  with  some 
of  its  applications,  may  possibly  occupy  a  position  sim- 
ilar to  that  of  Francis  Bacon  and  his  friends.  Men 
do  not  now  practise  turning  the  other  cheek ;  but  the 
practice  of  forgiving  an  enemy  is  approved  by  growing 
numbers  ;  and  if  we  conceive  of  a  social  state  in 
which  most  men  perceive  that  enmity  to  another  is 
enmity  to  self,  we  can  conceive  of  men  who  will  pity 
rather  than  punish  the  individual  who  is  unjust. 

In  this  light  we  can  readily  conceive  how  men  could 
voluntarily  do  good  to  those  who  hate  them,  return 
good  for  evil,  forgive  an  enemy,  love  their  neighbor 
as  themselves,  and  commiserate  the  thief  as  we  now 
commiserate  the  insane ;  for  the  man  who  would 
steal  when  theft  was  self-punishment  would  be  insane 
indeed. 

So,  when  we  subject  the  maxims  of  Jesus  to  the 
test  of  true  science,  we  find  that  all  of  them  but  one 
or  two  are  perfectly  lucid  and  theoretically  true.  Is 
it  possible  that  the  others  are  mere  delusion  ?  The 
geometer  who  would  insist  upon  using  material  lines 
and  volumes  could  never  prove  a  theorem  of  geome- 
try. But  no  geometer  uses  this  method.  If  Adams 
had  used  it,  he  could  never  have  told  the  Astronomer 
Royal  where  to  look  for  Neptune.  If  pathologists 
had  studied  none  but  diseased  organs,  all  hope  of 
diagnosis  had  been  vain.  And  if  the  moralist  will 
exclude  from  his  logic  the  conception  of  a  society  in 
which  all  men  are  equal,  and  hence  free,  he  can  never 
hope  to  establish  a  science  of  morals  which  can  pre- 
dict the  conduct  of  men  from  hour  to  hour. 

If  we  assume  that  moral  conduct  will  be  regular 


566  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

when  equal  stimuli  produce  equal  effects  upon  all,  we 
can  judge  of  present  morality  as  being  near  or  remote 
from  perfection.  But  that  proximity  or  remoteness 
will  be  precisely  known  when  we  know  the  proximity 
of  a  society  to  the  equilibrium  at  which  all  men  are 
equal.  Thus  we  can  weigh  the  kinetic  state  of  society 
against  the  equilibrated  state,  as  we  can  measure  the 
distance  between  any  point  in  a  stream  and  the  level 
of  the  sea.  As  the  current  broadens  and  deepens 
and  the  speed  increases,  we  know  that  the  level  is 
nearer.  We  know  what  the  level  will  be  like,  because 
we  have  observed  it  in  other  streams.  And  as  in  this 
onward  flow  of  social  force  the  moral  level  can  be 
reached  no  sooner  or  later  than  the  economic  level, 
we  know  in  advance  what  moral  facts  are  forthcoming. 
And  knowing  these,  our  moral  science  can  be  made 
as  perfect  as  any  other  science  used  now  by  men. 

It  would  be  strange  indeed  if  harmony  should  be 
found  in  all  the  facts  of  nature  except  the  facts  which 
concern  the  moral  sense  of  men.  We  can  be  assured 
that  these  facts  are  no  exception  to  the  law.  Har- 
mony is  there,  as  elsewhere.  We  are  convinced  that 
the  law  of  capital,  diffusion,  and  population  we  have 
developed  in  the  preceding  six  chapters  will  show  how 
that  harmony  can  be  understood.  We  have  endeav- 
ored to  show  it  in  the  present  chapter.  But  we  must 
not  take  leave  of  this  part  of  our  discussion  without 
pointing  out  that  the  other  social  sciences  will  be 
more  clearly  understood  if  we  apply  to  them  the  same 
logic  we  have  applied  to  ethics.  Economic  science 
will  better  understand  the  "  normal "  state  to  which 
economic  forces  "  tend,"  when  it  understands  that  the 
normal  state  is  ever  shifting  forward  toward  the  equi- 


xn  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND   CONCLUSION         567 

librium  in  which  economic  stimuli  produce  the  same 
effect  on  all  the  individuals  of  a  society.  Political 
science  will  be  better  able  to  generalize  its  laws  so 
that  they  will  include  the  true  relations  of  govern- 
ment to  capital,  and  the  relations  of  moral  and  eco- 
nomic forces  to  political  forces.  The  three  sciences 
of  ethics,  of  economics,  and  of  government  will  find 
that  the  conceptions  of  one  are  inseparable  from  the 
conceptions  of  the  others,  and  that,  at  root,  they  are 
the  same.  This  root  will  be  found  in  psychology, 
and  the  root  of  psychology  in  the  basic  forces  and 
functions  of  life. 

It  will  be  found,  moreover,  that  social  science 
must  be  universal.  Its  broadest  generalization  will 
include  all  forms  of  social  life,  whether  they  be  human 
or  otherwise.  Social  science  differentiates  as  the  facts 
differentiate.  All  political  groups  of  like  kind  will  be 
found  to  act  according  to  one  law.  But  as  we  ascend 
in  the  scale  of  psychic  life,  political  groups  present 
new  facts  to  be  generalized.  Some  groups  sustain 
life  by  altering  the  environment  in  quality  and  in 
quantity  more  than  other  groups.  Of  the  former, 
some  live  in  fixed  localities,  and  out  of  the  natural 
environment  arises  wealth  which  is  used  to  create 
new  wealth.  In  these  groups  government  is  found 
coexisting  with  capital.  Wherever  the  two  are  found 
together,  one  general  relation  is  observed  everywhere 
to  prevail  between  them.  This  relation  is  found  to 
lie  in  the  quantity  and  diffusion  of  the  wealth  created. 
As  the  quantity  and  diffusion  are  great,  the  group 
is  found  to  be  politically,  economically,  and  morally 
socialized.  As  the  quantity  and  diffusion  are  small, 
the  group  is  found  to  be  individualized  in  these  three 


568  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

aspects.  But  the  process  of  socialization  is  always 
found  to  equalize  the  distribution,  while  it  increases 
the  quantity,  of  wealth. 

In  human  groups  this  socialization  of  capital  is 
carried  on  and  made  necessary  by  the  nature  of  the 
capital  used.  Money  is  the  most  desirable  part  of 
human  capital  because  it  can  be  converted  into  all 
forms  of  wealth.  Government  was  hence  forced  to 
assume  complete  control  of  the  manufacture  of  money 
as  soon  as  the  thing  used  for  money  was  of  a  kind 
susceptible  of  government  manufacture.  The  self- 
interest  of  all  demands  that  no  individual  shall  in 
any  manner  manufacture  public  money.  He  does 
not  manufacture  private  money  of  intrinsic  value 
because  he  can  gain  no  economic  good  by  the  pro- 
cess. The  best  interests  of  all  are  served  by  public 
manufacture.  Any  man  at  any  time  may  possess 
money.  Most  men  always  possess  and  use  it.  The 
individual  who  has  least  money,  or  none  at  all,  desires 
that  all  money  shall  be  of  one  kind,  and  shall  be  pro- 
tected by  the  total  power  of  the  group.  And  so  does 
the  individual  who  has  a  little  money,  or  the  most. 

Out  of  money  arises  other  forms  of  capital  known 
as  commercial  paper.  Of  these  the  stock-share  is 
the  most  useful  form.  This  form  has  forced  a  more 
complex  system  of  production  and  capitalization. 
Next  to  money  the  most  highly  desirable  form  of 
capital  is  the  stock-share.  But,  unlike  money,  the 
stock-share  is  not  intrinsically  of  value.  It  is  only 
valuable  as  a  symbol  of  creative  capital.  Uniformity 
of  value  in  stock-shares  cannot  be  secured  by  public 
manufacture.  Protection  of  the  value  of  a  stock- 
share  is  as  desirable  as  the  protection  of  money. 


xii  MORAL  EQUILIBRIUM   AND   CONCLUSION         569 

Any  man  may  at  any  time  acquire  this  form  of  capi- 
tal. All  seek  it  because  it  is  the  most  desirable  form 
of  wealth  next  to  money.  If  its  value  is  to  be 
guaranteed  at  all,  it  must  be  guaranteed  by  the  total 
power  of  the  political  group. 

But  that  power  cannot  be  exercised  over  the  stock- 
share  itself.  It  must,  therefore,  be  exerted  over  the 
one  thing  of  intrinsic  value  which  the  stock-share  rep- 
resents. That  thing  is  creative  capital.  But  there  can 
be  no  social  control  over  capital  used  for  production 
of  wealth  the  value  of  which  depends  upon  its  indi- 
vidual character.  Social  control  of  capital,  therefore, 
must  be  limited  to  capital  which  produces  wealth 
bearing  no  individual  stamp  upon  it.  But  this  kind 
of  capital  is  the  only  kind  which  uses  the  stock-share 
as  its  symbolic  instrument.  Individuals,  whether  they 
own  symbolic  instruments  or  not,  all  desire  that  the 
value  of  these  instruments  shall  be  uniform,  for  this 
symbol  represents  the  value  of  the  real  capital  as 
measured  in  the  terms  of  product.  If  its  price-value 
be  larger  than  its  real  value,  those  who  acquire  it  pay 
more  for  it  than  it  is  worth  ;  and  this  uniformity  of 
the  value  at  which  it  is  sold  with  its  real  value,  is  as 
desirable  as  the  same  uniformity  in  money. 

Uniformity  of  this  kind  can  never  be  secured  as 
long  as  the  stock-share  and  the  capital  it  represents 
remain  in  private  hands;  for  stock-shares,  like  money, 
can  be  debased  by  those  who  control  them  and  the 
capital  of  which  they  are  symbols.  But  individuals 
cannot  personally  secure  the  honesty  of  stock-shares 
by  personally  attending  to  production,  any  more  than 
they  can  attend  to  the  manufacture  of  money.  The 
power  of  the  group  must  thence  be  used  through  the 


570  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

political  instrument  of  the  group,  as  it  is  used  in 
the  production  of  money.  That  instrument  is  the 
mechanism  of  government  created  by  the  majority  of 
the  group  itself. 

The  socialization  of  capital  made  necessary  by  these 
economic,  moral,  and  political  forces,  issues  in  motion 
toward  the  equilibrium,  or  the  economic  final  purpose, 
of  all  political  groups  in  which  capital  exists. 

The  purpose  of  an  individual  organism  is  to  live  as 
amply  as  may  be.  The  purpose  of  a  group  is  so  to 
live  that  individuals  shall  live  amply.  It  is  not  that 
one  or  many  shall  have  ample  life,  but  that  all  shall 
have  it.  The  amplest  existence  for  all  is  best  served 
by  a  limited  existence  for  each.  And  the  amplest 
life  for  all  is  found  only  when  the  amplitude  of  the 
life  of  each  is  equal  to  that  of  all  others.  The  pur- 
pose of  the  group  is  secured,  therefore,  only  when 
equal  amplitude  of  life  exists  for  all  its  members. 
This  state  is  now  observed  in  groups  of  hive-bees. 
The  only  observable  purpose  of  a  group  of  bees  is  the 
very  process  through  which  it  is  observed  to  pass. 
We  can  say  no  more  of  a  group  of  men.  But  human 
society  is  nowhere  in  equilibrium.  It  is  moving 
toward  that  equilibrium  and  the  only  conceivable  pur- 
pose of  its  motion  is  the  equilibrial  state  itself. 

In  the  higher  forms  of  political  groups  among  men, 
the  process  going  on  is  everywhere  the  same.  Pro- 
ductive power  increases,  wealth  multiplies  in  quantity 
and  diffusion,  and  intelligence  spreads  to  larger  num- 
bers. Increased  exercise  of  the  brain  checks  popula- 
tion. The  resulting  intelligence  multiplies  the  checks 
because  intelligent  persons  are  selected  for  propaga- 
tion. The  process  stops  when,  other  things  being 


xii  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND   CONCLUSION         571 

equal,  intelligence  ceases  to  be  of  value  in  the  selec- 
tion of  the  mate.  It  so  ceases  when  all  are  intellectu- 
ally alike  in  capacity,  or  nearly  so.  But  as  intelligence 
determines  the  fertility  of  men,  fertility  must  be  equal 
also,  or  nearly  so.  The  number  of  births  must  be 
equal,  or  nearly  so,  from  united  pairs.  But  this  num- 
ber must  be  equal  to  the  number  of  deaths,  if  longev- 
ity be  uniform.  And  if  longevity  be  uniform,  the 
number  of  births  per  united  pair  must  be  two  on  the 
average. 

The  numerical  proportions  of  the  sexes  will  be  con- 
trolled by  the  same  forces  which  control  them  now ; 
and  these  forces,  as  we  have  seen,  produce  equal 
numbers  of  males  and  females  with  men  as  with  mam- 
mals of  other  kinds. 

The  final  purpose,  therefore,  of  the  reproductive 
motion  of  society  is  the  establishment  of  a  reproduc- 
tive equilibrium,  which  shall  be  the  product  of  the 
same  forces  as  those  we  have  conceived  to  be  pro- 
ductive of  the  economic  equilibrium.  The  purpose 
is  not  single  but  twofold,  and  this  conclusion  at  which 
we  have  arrived  by  induction  can  be  arrived  at  by 
deduction  also.  For  the  force  which  moves  all  living 
things  to  action  is  a  compound  and  not  a  simple  force. 
The  nutrition  of  the  individual  and  the  propagation  of 
the  race  may  be  said  to  be  one  process  —  that  of 
growth.  But  if  we  conceive  of  the  function  of  assim- 
ilation as  being  one  aspect  of  growth,  and  that  of 
propagation  as  being  another,  we  can  conceive  of 
vital  growth  as  being  twofold  in  its  character.  The 
motive  of  social  motion  being  compound,  the  level  at 
which  social  motion,  flowing  in  a  right  line,  must 
stop  must  be  conceived  to  be  compound  also.  And 


5/2  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

the  character  of  the  twofold  stable  equilibrium  we 
have  deduced  is  found  to  be  a  character  into  which 
no  forces  are  compounded  save  those  which  make  up 
the  most  conspicuous  fact  in  human  observation. 
More  than  this  —  the  compound  character  of  the 
equilibrium  is  precisely  the  product  of  the  compound 
character  of  the  force. 

Let  us  carry  our  conclusions  to  the  furthermost. 
If  we  conceive  of  human  society  of  the  future  as 
being  divided  into  separate  groups,  we  must  conceive 
of  these  groups  as  being  all  alike.  When  a  group 
splits  up  into  two,  the  social  propagation  thus  effected 
will  be  precisely  similar  to  the  social  propagation  of 
hive-bees  or  the  propagation  of  a  simple  cell.  Each 
new  society  will  pass  through  that  recapitulative  or 
abridging  process  which  shall  be  a  repetition,  in  a 
short  time,  of  the  entire  process  through  which 
society  has  passed  during  all  the  ages.  This  funda- 
mental law  of  life,  observed  in  vital  organisms,  is  not 
now  absent  from  social  organisms,  nor  will  it  ever  be. 
But  the  abridged  process  cannot  be  in  advance  of  the 
secular  one. 

With  society  at  large  in  equilibrium,  no  new 
forms  can  be  developed  by  social  groups.  The  only 
change  conceivable  must  be  one  which  will  carry 
society  backwards.  We  can  conceive  of  no  change 
in  the  solar  system  save  one  by  which  its  present 
equilibrium  will  be  reduced  to  a  less  stable  form. 
When  social  forces  shall  have  been  once  equilibrated, 
the  only  conceivable  change  will  be  from  the  stable 
to  the  less  stable.  But  the  condition  of  stability  will 
be  the  supply  of  food.  The  question  of  the  exhausti- 
bility  of  the  food  supply  is  a  geological  question,  and 


xii  MORAL  EQUILIBRIUM  AND  CONCLUSION         573 

the  probability  of  exhaustion  would  seem  to  be  incon- 
ceivably remote. 

We  have  reserved  for  the  last  place  in  our  discus- 
sion a  force  which  is  considered  by  many  to  be  the 
most  important  factor  in  human  history  ;  a  motive 
held  by  many  to  be  of  prime  value  in  the  moulding  of 
human  destiny  and  in  the  development  of  social  life. 
This  force  is  religion  itself.  The  existence  of  religious 
belief  is  an  universal  fact  of  human  experience,  and  he 
who  would  minimize  its  importance  is  guilty  of  evasion 
for  which  there  can  be  no  palliation. 

The  question  at  once  suggests  itself :  Does  the 
theory  of  social  forces  advanced  here  account  for 
the  existence  of  the  religions  of  men  ?  We  meet  the 
question  fairly.  It  does  not.  We  have  not  sought 
to  inquire  into  the  origin  of  religion.  We  have  not 
considered  the  probability  of  the  truth  of  any  reli- 
gious system.  Our  c.onclusions  leave  the  entire  ques- 
tion of  theological  faith  untouched.  So  far  as  the 
principles  developed  in  this  work  go,  there  is  neither 
demonstration  nor  disproof  of  any  scheme  of  theolog- 
ical belief.  But  it  should  be  plain  from  our  con- 
clusions that  the  religion  which  will  be  practised  by 
the  human  race  of  the  future  must  be  one  which  shall 
not  be  repugnant  to  moral  ideas  of  equality.  If  we 
can  conceive  of  a  system  of  religion  capable  of  dem- 
onstration by  scientific  methods,  we  shall  conceive  of 
a  religion  which  shall  be  manifestly  true.  Humanity 
has  happily  passed  the  stage  of  its  social  evolution 
when  to  force  outward  acquiescence  in  religious  forms 
is  any  longer  conceivable. 

If  men  are  not  to  be  coerced  into  religious  belief 
by  physical  force,  they  must  be  drawn  into  it  by 


574  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

appeals  to  their  reason  and  their  sympathies.  In  a 
highly  intelligent  and  wealthy  social  group  that  reli- 
gion will  be  best  fitted  for  survival  which  best  com- 
mends itself  to  "reason,  while  at  the  same  time  it 
awakens  the  sympathies  of  an  intelligent,  free,  and 
moral  humanity.  It  must  not  hope  to  escape  the 
judgments  of  science,  for  science  judges  everything 
by  measuring  the  probability  of  its  truth  with  the 
broad  and  undeniable  facts  of  experience.  Nor 
should  any  moral  religion  fear  the  scrutiny  of  science, 
for  science  can  do  no  more  than  demonstrate  its  truth 
or  its  error.  As  long  as  science  cannot  achieve  either 
of  these  results,  religion  need  not  be  perturbed.  If  a 
religion  can  be  proved  to  be  false,  mankind  will  be 
better  for  the  knowledge.  If  science  has  a  method 
of  demonstration  which  religion  has  not,  it  will  best 
serve  religious  men,  who  are  moral,  to  facilitate  in- 
quiry by  the  use  of  that  method.  No  moral  man 
wishes  to  believe  error  when  truth  is  near.  Once 
that  he  perceives  the  possibility  of  error,  he  is  not 
satisfied  until  his  doubt  is  removed.  All  considera- 
tions give  way  before  this  one ;  for  his  most  pressing 
desire  is  to  know,  when  knowledge  is  possible.  Wis- 
dom for  him  is  happiness. 

The  material  with  which  science  deals  consists  of 
the  facts  of  human  experience.  Analysis  of  the  facts 
and  a  knowledge  of  the  causes  which  produce  them 
is  the  function  of  scientific  inquiry.  Science  has 
thus  indirectly  disclosed  error  in  religious  beliefs. 
If  men  now  no  longer  believe  that  the  weather  can 
be  influenced  by  prayer,  they  are  moved  to  abandon 
the  belief  by  the  fact  that  the  causes  of  changes  in 
temperature  are  known.  There  is  no  reason  why 


xii  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND   CONCLUSION         575 

men  should  pray  for  rain  any  more  than  for  perpetual 
spring  or  summer.  If  prayer  can  produce  rain  in  an 
area  of  high  barometer,  prayer  can  also  produce  a 
perpetual  season  of  sowing  and  reaping.  Scientific 
inquiry  has  done  much  to  remove  beliefs  of  this 
irrational  kind. 

But  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  facts  of  human 
experience  is  the  existence  of  religion  itself.  How 
are  we  to  deal  with  it  ?  If  science  deals  with  it  at 
all,  it  must  deal  with  it  in  one  way  only,  and  that 
way  must  be  the  same  as  that  involved  in  the  univer- 
sal application  of  the  scientific  method.  The  religion 
which  does  not  fear  the  truth  is  the  only  moral  reli- 
gion. If  it  be  true,  no  quantity  of  scientific  analysis 
can  ever  prove  that  it  is  not.  If  its  dogmas  tran- 
scend the  method  of  science,  that  fact  will  be  plain 
and  forceful  to  the  truly  scientific  mind.  And  the 
highest  verdict  of  science  upon  that  religion  which 
transcends  its  method  can  only  be  "Unproved."  If 
its  truth  does  not  transcend  science,  science  can 
demonstrate  it.  If  the  dogmas  of  all  living  religions 
can  be  shown  to  be  the  product  of  natural  causes, 
and  at  the  same  time  to  be  only  misconceptions  of 
true  facts,  all  living  religions  must  pass  away.  Reli- 
gious ideas  are  of  two  kinds  —  intellectual  and  moral. 
The  first  relate  to  the  cause  of  the  universe  at  large. 
The  second  relate  to  the  conduct  of  men  toward  one 
another,  and  their  conduct  in  relation  to  the  assumed 
first  cause.  Men  of  the  same  belief  as  to  the  first 
cause  may  differ  in  their  moral  conduct  in  relation 
to  that  cause,  while  they  are  at  one  in  their  conduct 
toward  one  another.  But  as  wealth  tends  to  produce 
intellectual  equality,  it  must  tend  likewise  to  elimi- 


576  THE  LEVEL  OF  SOCIAL  MOTION  CHAP. 

nate  differences  in  religious  opinions.  The  elimina- 
tion may  consist  in  changing  the  dogmas  of  all 
religions,  or  it  may  consist  in  drawing  all  men's 
minds  into  one  form  of  dogmatism.  In  the  light  of 
the  law  of  capitalization,  what  can  we  say  of  the 
religion  of  the  future  ? 

This  ideal  religion  must  possess  several  characters. 
Its  dogmas  must  not  be  manifestly  the  misinterpre- 
tation of  facts  of  known  cause.  The  dogmas  must 
be  themselves  beyond  demonstration,  yet  in  no  wise 
contradictory  to  the  known  facts  of  experience.  The 
body  of  its  beliefs  must  be  of  a  character  which  can- 
not be  explained  by  merely  natural  growth  of  ideas  in 
the  minds  of  men.  The  precepts  of  this  religion 
must  be  scientifically  moral,  and  its  ontological  con- 
cepts intellectually  rational.  A  religion  such  as  this, 
whether  it  be  now  living  or  not,  must  be  the  reli- 
gion of  the  future. 

Our  theory  of  capitalization  seems  to  indicate  that 
as  men  grow  rich  they  grow  intellectual  and  moral 
likewise  ;  that  the  social  state  which  they  most  desire 
is  the  very  state  toward  which  they  are  moving ; 
and  that  this  state  is  the  one  which  is  also  found,  in 
so  far  as  can  be  seen,  to  be  most  moral,  most  intel- 
lectual, most  happy,  and  most  free.  This  is  just 
what  we  should  expect  to  find  in  the  light  of  the 
theory  itself.  For  if  a  man  cannot  conceive  himself 
as  being  happy  unless  he  conceives  himself  as  re- 
maining a  man,  he  cannot  conceive  himself  as  being 
happy  if  he  conceives  himself  as  being  alone.  All 
his  conceptions  of  happiness  are  therefore  social. 
Whether  they  be  conceptions  of  happiness  here  or 
hereafter,  physical  or  spiritual,  temporal  or  eternal, 


xii  MORAL   EQUILIBRIUM   AND   CONCLUSION        577 

they  are  essentially  inseparable  from  ideas  of  associa- 
tion and  companionship  with  men  of  his  own  kind. 
He  cannot  conceive  of  an  earthly  social  state  more 
happy  than  that  toward  which  society  is  actually  mov- 
ing; and  he  cannot  do  so  because  society  is  moving 
toward  that  very  state.  What  is  beyond  that  state 
we  do  not  know,  because  the  only  conceivable  pur- 
pose of  the  only  forces  we  see  is  that  very  state 
itself.  If  more  than  this  can  be  known,  it  shall  be 
formulated  when  a  higher  generalization  of  social 
motion  is  found,  or  when  the  nature  of  force  itself  is 
more  clearly  understood. 


2P 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


Form  L9-Series  4939 


A     000532719 


I 


HM 
101 


